Big Brother star’s dad tells of regrets over not always supporting gay son
THE dad of reality TV star Hughie Maughan has revealed he deeply regrets his behaviour after first realising his son was gay.
Hughie came out to his family before starring in Channel 5’s Big Brother – but it came as a shock to Hughie Snr.
The former boxing coach initially said he’d “walk into his grave” to change his Dancing With The Stars son.
The Traveller, from Ballymun, North Dublin, later apologised for his comments and insisted he hoped his son would be a role model to others coming to terms with their sexuality.
Speaking to Neil Prenderville on Cork’s Red FM, Hughie Snr admitted he would have slagged gay people in the past before it “came to his doorstep”. He said: “I couldn’t accept it in any way. I felt embarrassed at the time, I wondered what other people would think. Travelling people can be cruel and I worried what they would say.
“We were told, myself and Kathleen my wife, we would be better off killing ourselves than having a gay Hughie with boyfriend Ryan Ruckledge and his family Sarah Morrissey, Lorraine Keane and Glenda Gilson launch Fashion Relief child.” He added looking back, he could see how his son must have felt when his own father speaking badly about gay people. Hughie Snr said: “Who am I to judge anybody? There is no one better than anyone else. Hughie does a lot of good things, we got messages from all over the world, telling us how Hughie had helped us.
“One girl got in touch from Canada, saying only for Hughie she doesn’t think she would be alive, and that watching him on the show helped her come out. “We had a lot of deaths among Travellers too afraid to come out. Young boys who died at 16, 17 and couldn’t cope with the fear of coming out because of people like me.
“The day I changed. I went to visit a cousin of mine in Navan. We went to see his brother’s grave and I looked around and saw all the young people dead in that graveyard.
“I thought, ‘God forgive me for feeling like I did. I need to be there for Hughie’.”