Emma Goswell, broadcaster

Emma Goswell is a broadcaster and producer based in Manchester. She's the host of Coming Out Stories, an archive of personal experiences of that moment, and has presented for the BBC, Virgin Radio and Gaydio for several years.

We discuss music by Yazoo, Erasure, and Prince. You can follow Emma on Instagram here.

Tracks of Our Queers is produced, presented and edited by Andy Gott.

You can listen to our Spotify playlist, Selections from Tracks of Our Queers, and find Aural Fixation in your favourite podcast provider. 

Transcript

Emma Goswell
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Andy Gott: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Tracks of our Queers. My name is Andy Gott, and each episode I'll talk to a guest about one song, one album, and one artist that have soundtracked their life as a queer person.

Emma Goswell is a broadcaster based in Manchester. Since 2018, she's produced and hosted the Coming Out Stories podcast, an archive of personal recollections on that most pivotal of moments for queer people, now accompanied by its own book.

She previously set up the first radio station inside a UK women's prison and is also a proud mother to Neve.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating or review in your app, or even better, tell a friend. 

Tracks of our Queers is an entirely independent production, so if you would like to help keep the podcast ad free, you can shout me a coffee via the link in the show notes. Every penny goes to [00:01:00] episode production.

Over to Emma.

Hello Emma, welcome to Tracks of Our 

Queers. 

Emma Goswell: Thank you very much and may I commend you on an excellently titled podcast because it's just genius.

Andy Gott: Thank you, I love the validation. Tell me a bit about what music meant to you as a child. What was playing at home, who was playing it, and then what were you responding to? 

Emma Goswell: Well, this is interesting because I'm very, very old.

I grew up in the 1971. And there was one man that just played at Glastonbury actually on the Sunday night slot. It was very instrumental in my youth. Cat Stevens was really important to me as a child

I just have so many memories of singing along to Cat Stevens songs in the back of the car, Moonlight Shadow, Father and Son, and Morning is Broken, even, which was the song that was my sister's birth song. So those sort of things we were singing along to. And John Denver, Country's always been [00:02:00] quite important.

And there's a family song, which we always used to sing, which no one's ever heard of, but I urge you to go and find it. And it is Grandma's Feather Bed by John Denver. And it's about someone going to sleep in the grandma's bed with. 10 chickens, a piggy they found in the shed, just like all these kids piled on and just having a really way of a time at the grandma's house.

So yeah, mad stuff like that really was what I was listening to as a child. I think we just thought music was a fun thing and music was something that we would sing as a family and I actually grew up in the Middle East. So we would drive from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, which let me just say is a little bit different to how Abu Dhabi and Dubai looks today. So we would drive through the desert and we play a competition where we'd have to be the first person to spot a camel that would keep us entertained for hours.

Or we'd sing along to John Denver in the back seat. So yeah, that was my childhood. 

Andy Gott: [00:03:00] I'm picturing a a very musically engaged family. So, music on a lot, I presume, and all enjoying the same stuff together. 

Emma Goswell: So, we are a partying family, so we had a lot of parties growing up. My parents do love a good party. Um. But I also just remember for a lot of my childhood, being forced to listen to Radio 2, which was frankly shit in the 70s and 80s.

And now I listen to it and I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to inflict my children on Radio 2 and think it's really brilliant, which it is, their music policy has changed a lot. So yeah, music, music was always around. 

Andy Gott: Do you remember maybe the first song or figure in music who

Made you.

a Little bit aware that perhaps you weren't the same as everyone else. 

Emma Goswell: The first person when he said that that sprung to mind was Boy George actually. At school in the 1980s, all my friends were Duranis actually, and I never really was a massive Duran Duran fan, but I love Culture Club.[00:04:00] 

I mean, you can't underestimate how powerful it was when Boy George rocked up on Top of the Pops, which everybody watched. Literally the whole country was going... What the hell is that? People just couldn't understand gender fluidity in the early 1980s.

People just couldn't understand that this was a man who identified as a man, but yes, was quite happy wearing a dress wearing ribbons in his hair and wearing a lot of makeup. 

I just love Boy George and really did identify with him and thought, you're just not afraid to be who you are and wear what you want to wear and, you know, sob the critics, and that I found really empowering as a teenager. 

Andy Gott: I 

think you're spot on about that pivotal moment and the impact it had on the country and beyond.

But do you remember questioning things about yourself as a result? Or was it more of like a, [00:05:00] this is out in the ether? Oh, this is, there's something different going on here. 

Emma Goswell: Yeah, no, I think it was, oh gosh, probably two or three years after that, that I sort of clocked that I was gay.

It took me a long time to work it out myself, I think, really. And I was in a boarding school. It was the 1980s. I didn't hear anyone gay. There were not any lesbian role models. I think seeing Boy George made me realize that there were different people out there and they were obviously gay people in the world.

Although actually it made me think there were gay men in the world. I didn't really see any lesbians on TV, apart from Martina Navratilova. So it was probably more subliminal in that it was all going on in the background and I was thinking, Oh gosh, there are people that are different, but it took me a while to clock that.

That was why I felt different. And that was why I wasn't like all my other friends who were going out, engaging in sexual activity with boys at a very young age, you know, I just wasn't interested in doing that. 

Andy Gott: You have pretty much spent most of your career, correct me if I'm wrong, working in oral [00:06:00] storytelling and broadcasting.

You've worked on radio for years. You have your own podcast, it's called Coming Out Stories. So your passion for that format is evident. Why do you love talking to people?

Emma Goswell: It's interesting isn't it? When I was at university I edited the student union magazine. And, you know, I just wanted to be a journalist.

That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be Kate Adie actually. I wanted to tell the news and that's where I started my career was actually reading news bulletins because you know, it's 10 o'clock. I'm Emma Goswell. Here are your news headlines.

And, you know, that's, that's what I wanted to do basically. But then I realized. fairly quickly working in radio that actually the real fun to be had was being the presenter and actually interviewing people. And I think I've always just been a nosy parker, which is a good trait for being a journalist and being a presenter.

I'm just very interested in people and some people might call that nosy, but I think it's healthy to be interested in the world around you. And there is nothing more powerful [00:07:00] and inspiring than a true story. I mean, it's a cliche, but the most incredible stories are not fiction.

They are truth. I mean, I've met some incredible people over my life who've been through incredible hardship and come through the other side, just meeting them and talking to them. I just find endlessly fascinating. And I hope that by sharing those stories, they're uplifting and empowering to the people that listen to them as well.

And I'll never ever run out of talking to people and finding people interesting, I don't think.

Andy Gott: I would love to hear a bit more about Coming Out stories because I think I've got a pretty clear idea of why it exists and why people have responded to it.

But tell me from your point of view, how it came about and how it's evolved over the years. 

Emma Goswell: Well, I have to thank my straight friend who was my landlady at the time because I just split up with a long term partner and made myself homeless.

So, I was the lesbian in the loft. 

Andy Gott: We all need a lesbian in the loft. 

Emma Goswell: exactly. We're very [00:08:00] DIY doing. Ooh, stereotype. She's called Sam Walker. I'd worked with Sam for years. Sam is a brilliant broadcaster. 

She was on BBC five live, and she said to me, Emma, I really, really think. You should be doing your own podcast and you should be collecting coming out stories. Why don't you tell me your coming out story and then we'll go and collect some others.

And because I'm an idiot, I actually thought, I don't know, Sam, it's 2017. You know, are people really interested in my coming out story? Do we really need to keep doing this? And surely it doesn't matter. And luckily she talked me around because it is the most fascinating thing that I've ever done in my life to actually share my story, which was a long time ago, and then just the stories that we've collected since then have been mind blowing.

I only have to look at my inbox on a regular basis of how that podcast has genuinely helped people who are in the closet, or even if they've just come out and. People find episodes that are relevant [00:09:00] to them, and I hope that there's an episode out there for you, however you identify, wherever you are from in the world, wherever your story is, that there's someone in my back catalogue that you can listen to and go, Oh, wow, I mean, obviously your life isn't going to pan out exactly the same as these people, but I think it's brought real comfort and insight into people who I yet to take the plunge and come out to actually listen to how it worked out for other people and to hear other people talking about all the difficult times and how they overcame it and those difficult and awkward conversations that didn't necessarily pan out how they wanted them to.

But generally speaking, things have worked out for everybody. 

I've never ever interviewed a single person that regretted coming out as LGBTQ and I'm including in that, people who were made homeless, that did face physical violence, that never spoke to their parents again, and they are very much a minority, let me say that before I scare anyone, but even they are happy that they are now able to live their lives and be their true [00:10:00] selves.

Andy Gott: As you've just expressed so eloquently, a lot of us understand that the coming out story is one of, if not the, pivotal moments on our path to living our fullest queer lives.

A question I do like to ask guests for this podcast

sometimes is what music they can possibly recall listening to around the time that they came out if, if it did have a soundtrack at all. Do you Emma happen to remember what you were listening to when you came out? 

Emma Goswell: Well, actually no one's ever asked me that. What was I listening to in 1989? I mean, it was a great year for music, wasn't it? 

Yeah, Soul to Soul. I was really into sort of 80s electronica. I was also a goth in the late 80s. So I was actually listening to really depressing stuff like The Damned, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cult, and The Cure, my all time favorite band.

Oh, the Smiths as well. So a lot of white men with guitars sounding depressed is basically what I was listening to, [00:11:00] which is probably not what you've had a lot of on your podcast. 

Andy Gott: Well, the beauty of

this is, is that there's no wrong answer. I love a curveball.

Just before we do head into your

selections, Emma, you are also a mother. You're a parent. 

Emma Goswell: She's called Neve Abigail Freda Goswell. She's an absolute. little bundle of joy. She really is. It's a cliche, but she is just the most radiant, joy giving human being on the planet that I have ever met. And everybody, if I had a pound for every woman that came up to me and went, Oh, I could just take her home.

I'd be very rich. People just fall in love with her whenever they see her. They really do. She's just smiles all the time. She wakes up smiling and talking. She doesn't cry. So yeah, very lucky. 

Andy Gott: That's so beautiful. Best thing you've ever done? Or more complicated? 

Emma Goswell: Yeah, well, it is quite complicated in the sense that I'm 52 now, so she was 50 when I was born. So clearly not biologically mine. Although Janet Jackson did have a baby at 50. I don't know how that's possible. But anyway, it certainly wasn't possible for me.

I was [00:12:00] already five years into the menopause. 

But I always wanted, kids, I always wanted to have that experience and I have been trying since I was in my sort of late 30s and I did try the process myself with a good friend of mine and my body just said no, it was never going to happen.

So I was quite depressed for a while and thought this will never, ever, ever happen. And then I met my partner who you know, is the one and we will be together forever. And luckily she's 10 years younger than me. So she was capable and she wanted to have a baby. So a few years ago, we went down the IVF route and very lucky to report it happened first time because let's face it, it doesn't always.

But we were incredibly lucky and I've ended up with. The most gorgeous baby. I mean, it was a very difficult start. She was diagnosed as having a heart problem in utero. So we spent the first five weeks in Alder Hey Hospital. She had to have open heart surgery twice. She has down syndrome, which brings its own set of challenges and difficulties as [00:13:00] well.

And so developmentally, a bit behind all of her peers, but you know, she is now fit and healthy and those things will all come. In terms of being an older parent, I do notice it occasionally.

Someone, some bitch did actually ask me if her grandmother on the tram a couple of weeks ago, which was not very happy about. But generally speaking, it's not too bad. The only thing it really, when it really comes up is that I go to a group at my gym called fit mums. And I just thought it would be, yeah, you put the babies down in the middle, just a few stretches.

It'd be quite easy because these other women will have actually just given birth. So it'd be quite leisurely. Oh my God. It's the most hard thing I've ever done in my life. It's like being in the army and doing circuit training. And of course, everyone's 20 years younger than me because they have just given birth and they're all in their thirties.

So I do feel my age then to be honest. I'm like, I can't, I can't do that one. We're not with my knees. That's the only time I really notice it. 

Andy Gott: Okay, so the track you picked, what

did you pick? And please tell me 

why. 

Emma Goswell: I picked [00:14:00] Only You by Yazoo from the album Upstairs at Eric's, which came out in 1982, and interestingly Vince Clark is involved in two of my choices, and as Andy Bell once said, Vince Clarke, he introduced him once as the coolest heterosexual in the world, which I thought was very funny and it's very true because he was also involved in one of my other favorite bands of the 1980s, Depeche Mode, so I mean, the man can do absolutely no wrong.

So as I said, I did love listening to 80s electronica. Actually, my favorite song of all time, I didn't pick, I don't know why is Together in Electric Dreams. 

Andy Gott: Banger. Oh my god. 

Emma Goswell: love. Absolute banger. If I hear it, I'll be on that dance floor. It is written into my will that that song will be played at my funeral. 

Andy Gott: I'll be there, Emma. I'll be at your funeral.

Emma Goswell: It'll be a big event, hopefully. 

But back to the song I did actually choose. [00:15:00] Now, I chose this song for a sad reason, in the sense that it was my first ever breakup song. And I loved it as soon as I heard it, I just loved this song. It's so catchy, I always want to sing along to it, but it was entirely ruined for me in the summer of 1989 when I thought the love of my life, who was my first girlfriend at school, we'd been together nine months, promptly decided to finish with me one night, while that song was playing. Totally changed that song for me from being a song that I love that made me feel quite happy to a song that I would literally cry to for about the next 10 years whenever I heard it because it would totally transport me to that moment where I had my first ever heartbreak and I mean they always say that you never get over your first love and it did take me a lot of time so it it's just [00:16:00] a song that always roots me in a time and a place and I can remember exactly where we were, the decorations in her bedroom, what she said to me, how devastated I felt then and for the next however many years, and yeah, it's a song that can just transport me to that very lonely place of actually having a girlfriend, but being in the closet and not telling anyone and thinking ridiculously that nobody knew.

I then found out about 30 years later that everybody knew but thinking that nobody knew. So being in a very lonely place that I couldn't. tell anyone why I was morose and why I was depressed and why I was utterly heartbroken because no one knew that I was even in a relationship because I thought it was impossible to come out as being gay.

So it takes me back to an emotional time and a tough time really. But somehow I've turned that now. So now I feel I still enjoy listening to that song.

Andy Gott: [00:17:00] I think, of course, time is a healer, but you've really hit on something special there that for a lot of us we can go through our first heartbreak while closeted, and it is a very different experience to being out, and I

remember exactly going through that, Emma, and the thought that I had to go to school and couldn't talk to any of my friends about this. I think there's a reason that is part of why that maybe really hit you quite hard. And it took you a few years to get over because even if you'd moved on to someone new, that particular feeling of pain, it's a pretty tough one to get through.

Emma Goswell: It was, I'm surprised that I managed to get through it really, and I just left school so I didn't have, The benefit of seeing my friends on a daily basis anyway, and it's pre internet age. So we'd have to call each other up on our landlines.

And, you know, I was living with my parents after I left school and I wasn't physically near any [00:18:00] of my friends either. So I was feeling particularly isolated and alone, really, which was what led my dad to give me the ultimatum and basically he wanted to know what was wrong with me. He had a very depressed.

Daughter on his hands who normally wasn't like that and he just sat me down one day and went what the hell is wrong with you? Are you on drugs? Are you pregnant or are you a lesbian 

Andy Gott: all 

of 

the above? 

Emma Goswell: Yes So, I think he got off quite lightly really the fact that was only a lesbian so yeah 

Andy Gott: The song, you mentioned that you really

enjoyed it before, and I can definitely

see that, but I also do get

a fair bit of melancholy from the song as it is. And Melancholy is beautiful, I love melancholy, but it's, it's not a euphoric jump

for joy song. It's quite,

There's already a bit of queer yearning in 

there.

Emma Goswell: And in fact, my girlfriend at the time, she suddenly [00:19:00] clocked was playing on her little tape recorder behind us. And she went, That's a bit unfortunate, isn't it, that that's playing?

I was like, yeah, I think that's the least of my worries right now. But yeah, thank you. Yeah, it is unfortunate that that's playing right at this very moment. You're dumping me and ripping my heart in two. 

Anyway, never mind. She moved to Australia and doesn't speak to me anymore. So there you 

Andy Gott: I do think that segues perfectly

into your album for reasons that you've already mentioned. So, what is the album and tell me why you picked it?

Emma Goswell: So I've picked the Circus by Erasure, which is their second album, but it's the one that I was introduced to. It 1987, so spot on, I was 16 when that album came out. And I probably heard sometimes on the radio and immediately went out and bought the tape to play my Sony Walkman, obviously.

And sadly, and I feel bad if they are [00:20:00] listening, because I was still living in the Middle East at this time, I would have gone to the souk and bought a pirate copy. So apologies. to all artists involved. That's what we did as teenagers when we lived in the Middle East. So I don't think any royalties went to Andy Bell or Vince Clark, so 

Andy Gott: There's 

something erasure cassette in a souk. 

Emma Goswell: I used to love it. It's so fun. It was like our one connection to something Western and something because we didn't have Top of the Pops. We didn't have anything like that. You know, we had prayer intervals on the TV every couple of hours so yeah, it was an interesting childhood. 

So I bought that in the suit. Played it again and again and that really, really resonated me. I mean, I just adored the song sometimes.

But it's got Victim of Love on there, which I absolutely love. Hideaway, the second song, I re listened to it last week when I know I was going to be talking about this and it just has got the most poignant lyrics. And it [00:21:00] is about someone coming out to their parents and not being accepted.

So I've actually printed them out because I thought I might read a little bit of it just because it's so poignant. And it starts like this. One day the boy decided to let them know the way he felt inside. He couldn't stand to hide it. His mother, she broke down and cried, Oh, my father, why don't you talk to me now?

And it's this whole battle about this young man that's come out to his parents and feeling really conflicted and not speaking to them. And how is he going to make his way in the world? But it sort of looks to the future as well, because there's a line where it says, there's a new world.

You can make it on your own. Yeah, he's obviously gone through hardship and it just resonates with me because there's so many stories and coming out stories my podcast that are, you know, follow that line, you know, there's been really tough times with parents, but people have gone on and made it on their own [00:22:00] and discovered a new world of queerness out there that they've joined and they've got their own gay family.

And just the fact that Andy Bell. Was one of those rare breeds was an out and proud gay man in the 1980s where I don't forget we're in the middle of an AIDS epidemic and the tabloids were vile to gay men, blaming them for the epidemic. Society was not nice to gay men in the 1980s that was incredibly intolerance and yet somehow people like him and Jimmy Somerville and Mark Almonds and boy George.

Managed to just stick two fingers up to society and just be out and proud and be themselves. 

Andy Gott: I cannot possibly imagine the bravery it took for Andy Bell, and shout

out to whatever he said about Vince Clark. I think I've said this before.

Vince Clark. incredible ally from day one. Because he would have been just as much a [00:23:00] supporter of Andy Ballin, those conversations with everyone from record label executives to the press. in that they, I presume wanted to be as commercially successful as possible. And then what track 2 is, hideaway that you referenced the lyrics to on this album, which they wanted to be a success.

It is so explicitly about. coming out and the sadness but also the hope at the end and, and just endless props to Andy Bell and erasure for, for leaving that impact on people. 

Emma Goswell: Exactly. And it, I mean, I've had a career where I've been lucky enough to meet all my idols. So I've met George and I've met Andy Bell two or three times now.

And it is, I mean, you can't, what do you say to someone like, Oh my God, I loved you when I was a teenager. Thank you. You know, we could only say that once really, but yeah, just hugely privileged 

Andy Gott: really. Well that ties into my next question though actually, because yes it's one thing to love someone as a teenager, but I think that people like Erasure and Andy bell if anything, are more loved by their fans as they age.

[00:24:00] As we move into... Okay, not it's not everywhere. But as we move into hopefully a more tolerant time in society, we can look back on times like that in the 80s and recognize how hard it was. And if anything, that makes me appreciate people like Andy Bell more.

I'd have to say to him, the more that time goes on, I, I respect what you've done and the, and your 

music. 

Emma Goswell: Yep. And still. still going out and still playing. I saw him just a few years ago and he was still wearing the gold larmy hot pants, you know, like he was a teenager still. He just absolutely didn't care. He was just loving it and wearing what he wanted to wear and being the man that he wanted to be.

It was just perfect.

Andy Gott: Well the final selection you've made, your artist, who and why? 

Emma Goswell: It's a difficult one, isn't it? Because I haven't gone for someone overtly queer, although obviously a gay ally. There's a lot of ways that you [00:25:00] can interpret that. But it's someone that I listened to again a lot during the 1980s that everybody at our school absolutely adored.

They are probably one of the most prolific. and talented artist that has ever walked the planet. 

And it is Prince, His Purple Highness. I mean, I don't know where to start with him. The man just had talent coming out of every single poor, didn't he? Can you think of any other artists that wrote their first song at the age of seven and form the first band at 13? You know, he was already making albums before he turned 20 and not just making albums, playing all the instruments on those instrumentalist.

Can you think of any other artists that has written? not just tracks for other people, but those tracks that he wrote for other people, because he had so much music, he just gave loads of it away. They became the biggest hits for those artists, like Sinead O'Connor, the Bangles, you know. It's just the breadth of his work is just [00:26:00] incredible. 

Andy Gott: It's exhausting almost. 

Emma Goswell: It is exhausting. I just watched a Channel 4 documentary a few weeks ago about when it's just like, I can't even believe how many albums he's brought out and all different styles as well. He doesn't have one particular style.

I mean, some of there's a lot of funk there, obviously, but he's merging blues. He's merging rock and roll. 

And then let's talk about the imagery as well. I mean, the outfits he used to, he was not shy of getting his body out or say, you know, he was just very for a straight man. very flamboyant and out there, I think.

Andy Gott: And you referenced

Vince Clark being called the coolest straight man. There's something in

Prince being maybe one of the queerest straight men in that no one is doubting his adoration for the female form, but there's no doubt that the imagery, the vocals.

The references are deeply queer throughout his career. And it's a bit complicated because I think he had a complex relationship himself, maybe [00:27:00] in regards to his religion and his views on sexuality,

but, 

um, 

Emma Goswell: When he became sort of by the year 2000, when he became a Jehovah's witness, there was definitely a few dodgy things said and. But it's very hard to interpret, isn't it? Because apparently when he was interviewed, he never let anyone record it. So then when they wrote the interview up, he'd go, no, I didn't say that.

So definitely a complex character, but like say even in his lyrics. I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I'm something you'll never understand, you know, and I think that's, we might not have used words like that, but he was very gender fluid, wasn't he? In the 1980s when we didn't have that terminology really. 

Andy Gott: And I think when he was later asked about that line, he's, the references were that, well, he was talking about God, but I think again, that's a very clever case of,

well, it can mean whatever you want it to mean, can't it? It 

So, going back to Emma, listening in the 80s, was there ever a moment where you felt almost seen by Prince in your own identity, or were those things not necessarily crossing over? 

Emma Goswell: It was crossing over. I just really [00:28:00] appreciated the way that he didn't care, you know, he was a rebel.

He did what he wanted to do. And as a teenager, you like to think that you're a rebel, don't you? And you're crossing boundaries or pushing boundaries constantly, you know, and the fact that he did his first TV appearance in bikinis and knee high boots. I mean, he was the ultimate performer, wasn't he?

Really? And he was very, he was very, very sexualized? I think I do remember us all being amazed at the song darling Nikki. Absolute filth. Yeah. So there was something refreshing about the way he would just do what he wanted to do, basically.

I was just so flawlessly confident with it already. And I think that when you see someone like that, you just think, well, why wouldn't I got that confidence to wear clothes and be that? 

Andy Gott: Indeed. Okay, now I've got a horrible question for you. Can you, on the spot, give me[00:29:00] the top three Prince tracks you would give to a young queer person who admits they don't know much about Prince?

What would you ask them to go away and listen to? 

Emma Goswell: Well, I always loved Kiss, and I was just obsessed with that. I bought that on 12 inch. Records we're talking now. 

I just used to love it. I just, the lyrics are hilarious, act your age, not your shoe size. There's just so many funny lyrics in that.

And it just something that always makes me want to get on the dance floor. 

Let's go crazy. The guitar on it is just phenomenal and it's screaming and screeching. 

I like some of the slower ones and there's the soundtrack to the Batman film, Tim Burton's, and there's a song on that album called The Arms of Orion which I listen to a lot and I found it very emotional at times. [00:30:00] 

Andy Gott: I was gonna say I've never heard that one and I think one of the

beauties of an artist like Prince is that because of the size of his back catalogue you always think you know most things and then you'll find a new gem. 

A few weeks ago, my friend took me to this little tiny cinema where they were screening a remastered clip of his Sign of the Times concert film.

It's from about 1987 and It was as masterful and beautiful as you'd expect it to be. But the next day, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, Emma, but when you've been to a really amazing concert, and then the next day, I almost can't bear to listen to the music, because it makes me sad that I'm not at the concert

anymore. And I was having

that with Prince, and then I was like, wait, you weren't even at the concert.

You just went to see

the film at

the cinema 30 years after the concert. And I'm interpreting that as the power of Prince to make me feel like I was actually at a concert 30 years ago.

Emma Goswell: [00:31:00] Well I'm Still upset and angry about the fact that I never saw Prince and he did come to Manchester. A very small intimate gig and nobody could get tickets to this gig. It was really who you knew and it was people in the music industry and blah.

Anyway my co host on Gideon managed to get a ticket and I couldn't get one. And I've never been so upset and annoyed. I was like, I love this man. I can't go. And of course, no one's allowed to take phones in. No one's allowed to record it. 

So, there's no record of that gig ever happening, really. But by all accounts, it was bloody epic. 

Andy Gott: Well,

That was wonderful, Emma. I'd love to know what are you currently working on, aside from new episodes of Coming Out [00:32:00] Stories? 

Emma Goswell: I am just towards the end of a brilliant podcast that we've been making for BBC Sounds called Danny Beard on same sex love and marriage, which I urge you all to go and have a listen to. have the 10th

anniversary. of marriage equality being brought in, in England and Wales. It's that obviously longer for civil partnerships, but 10 years of equal marriage in England and Wales. So we got Danny to sit down with five very different couples starting off with the first same sex couple to get married in the UK.

There was a few that did it on that first day, but they were three minutes past midnight, whereas everyone else was about sort of four or five or six minutes past midnight. So, they properly had their moment in history. 

And it's just been a really, really interesting and wonderful series to work on.

Andy Gott: And

I asked you beforehand to think of a queer charity you'd like to give a shout out to. 

Emma Goswell: So as a [00:33:00] proud parents now there's a little charity that is really struggling at the moment. And I think about the only one in the UK, they are based in Manchester, but they're called proud to be parents. It's the number two in the letter B if you're looking for them online. And they basically only have enough funding to get them to the end of August.

So they're really looking for donations or help. And if you're in the greater Manchester area and you are a parent there, it's just been brilliant to. hook up with them and actually meet other LGBT parents. And you might say, well, why does it matter? But, you do have a very specific experience being same sex parents.

So to meet other lesbian and gay parents has been really useful, really helpful. And for Neva, she grows up just to see other families that are like hers is just so important. So if you can support Proud to be Parents in any way, then I would massively appreciate that. 

Andy Gott: Well, emma Goswell,

you are queer and thank you very

much for

your

tracks. 

Emma Goswell: I am queer and thank you for asking me. Cheers, Andy.[00:34:00] 

Andy Gott: You can learn more about Emma, the Coming Out Stories podcast, and Proud to be Parents over in this episode's show notes. This episode was produced, recorded, and edited by me, Andy Gott. You can email me at tracksofourqueers at gmail. com. You can follow the podcast at tracksofourqueers on social media, and if you're not already, of course, do subscribe.

See you next time.[00:35:00] [00:36:00] [00:37:00]