WELCOME

Welcome to the autumn issue of Pride Life. Hopefully you had a great summer and a fantastic Pride wherever you celebrated it. Year by year the Pride movement just seems to grow bigger, and it’s witness to the increasing acceptance and visibility of our community that more and more of our straight friends join us every year in celebrating our fantastic diversity. That’s something we should be grateful to Pride for. Not that it’s always been like that. When I came out (and that’s a long-time ago!) the closest I had to a gay role model was the likes of Mister Humphries in Are You Being Served? As we see in this issue’s look at LGBT TV, things have changed today so much for the better with gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people now being positively and sympathetically represented on the small screen. Back in the day, for a pop star to come out as gay would have been career suicide and that’s why cover star Sam Smith, interviewees Markus Feehily and John Grant are so important today, especially to people just thinking of coming out. In fact, we reckon they’re heroes.

So with that in mind, we’re launching our Pride Life Hero Awards. Go to pridelife.com/awards and tell us who you think should be honoured for their contribution to the LGBT community. Vote now – and we’ll publish the results in the New Year.

It’s your Pride. It’s your Life. And it’s your Vote that counts. Nigel Robinson Editor-in- Chief