Erasure’s Andy Bell opens up about cottaging in the latest Attitude Heroes podcast
By Ross Semple
Any Bell opens up in the latest Attitude Heroes podcast about growing up as a gay man.
The Erasure legend talks to Attitude’s Editor in Chief Matt Cain about growing up as an effeminate boy on a council estate in Peterborough, and how frustrated he felt keeping his sexual desires to himself.
It all become too much for Andy at one point, and he reveals that he even attempted to release some of his built up sexual tension by giving cottaging a try.
“In Peterborough I just felt so frustrated. I ended up making little drawings in my exercise books of flick porn, you know, doing the actual drawings of someone cumming and just making it like a little flick book because you couldn’t get anything.
“You only had the Freeman’s catalogue… I used to try and go cottaging in Peterborough but it was so small you couldn’t really… I was really, really frustrated to the point of when you’re boiling and explode over,” he adds.
Elsewhere in the Attitude Heroes podcast, Andy opens up about the effect his 1998 HIV diagnosis had on both him and his late partner Paul, who had also been living with the virus prior to his death in 2012.
The former chart-topper admits: “We just went through this very bleak, black period both of us, I think probably for about 10 years, where we were just oblivious, taking drugs, not even leaving the house, and my body was breaking down and I was kind of like in denial about it.”
Listen to the full interview with Erasure’s Andy Bell in episode five of Attitude Heroes – available to download free from iTunes or other podcast platforms now.
Attitude Heroes is produced by Wisebuddah and sponsored by the GREAT Britain campaign, which welcomes the world to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK, and also Jaguar. For more product information please visit jaguar.co.uk.