World of Chig   

24.2.09
Queer As Folk 10 - how it started for Chig

For today's little shimmy down memory lane (AKA Canal Street) to celebrate Queer As Folk's tenth anniversary yesterday, I shall recount the tale of how I ever knew about it to start with. It's one of those stories which could so easily not have happened, which would then not have set in train a whole load of other things which have happened to me in the last ten years.

Rewind to January 1998. I was on holiday on Gran Canaria with two friends, staying at Villas Blancas. There was a lovely guy called Matt in one of the neighbouring apartments. We hadn't had very much of a chat until one day when I lost my friends on the beach. (Look, one sand dune looks pretty much like another, okay?) I had to come back to the apartment in a taxi with no money and no shoes as my friends had the bag with our stuff in. Luckily, I was able to borrow money for a taxi from Matt and, as I was also without the apartment keys, I sat and chatted to him outside his apartment until my friends appeared. We stayed in touch after that holiday by e-mail, so later in the year, when Matt was working as script editor on a new gay drama series, he knew that I was writing for Gay Times. He suggested me going up to Manchester for a night shoot, so I could meet the cast and the writer. I put this to the editor, sensing that this was going to be quite a newsworthy programme for the gay press, and one weekend in October 1998, off I toddled up to Manchester to meet Matt and observe the night shoot. But I hadn't quite come prepared for what followed.

Find out why later this week.

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