Selling Out! - S2 Ep 1: Gin, Gaydio & Gloriously Unfiltered | Kathy Caton & Nigel May / Selling Out!

Selling Out! - Ep 1: Gin, Gaydio & Gloriously Unfiltered | Kathy Caton & Nigel May / Selling Out!

Selling Out! is the podcast for LGBTQIA+ founders, leaders and creatives. Real conversations about building a life and a career on your own terms, straight jackets not included. 🏳️‍🌈

Season 2 opens with two Brighton broadcasting legends, and it's a joy.

From buttering sandwiches with the back of a spoon to a Camden pub, a world-famous gin and the BBC, and from a Virgin Records basement to Gaydio, shopping telly and nine novels, why a "chaotic" career only makes sense looking backwards.

Kathy Caton (she/her/they, L and Q) grew up in the deep countryside of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire in the shadow of Section 28, backpacked through Australia, Mexico and Guatemala, then trained at Central School of Speech and Drama (and was sacked from tap). She ran up such a bar tab at her local in Camden that she had to work it off, ended up running the pub, and started a theatre company upstairs. After moving to Brighton on a whim, her first job was DJing in a shed at the end of the pier. She went on to help launch the city's community radio station and now presents on BBC radio. She is also the founder of Brighton Gin, 15 years in and winning gold medals around the world, and of Bottoms Rest pub. Every year the gin team commissions a queer artist, pays them properly, and puts the proceeds from a limited edition Pride bottle to an LGBTQ+ charity.

Nigel May (he/him, G and Q) started on the tills at Sainsbury's, then spent a day playing Kylie's debut album on repeat in a Virgin Records basement in Gloucester. He became a showbiz journalist on Looking and More magazine (where he commissioned Position of the Fortnight), edited a gay newspaper, and found himself on TV by accident after training presenters at an internet company. Since then he has been a bingo caller (catchphrase: "my balls are flowing"), a shopping channel regular for more than 20 years, and the face of craft TV on Hobby Maker. He presents shows on Gaydio, hosts the podcast A Gay Old Time, and has written nine books, from glossy blockbusters to the cosy crime caper Quilling Me Softly.

This episode is full of laughs and big truths. Expect the Section 28 childhood, the early "admissions" and the awful things people said when they came out, a boss who said "don't tell the viewers you're queer", and a very honest conversation about feeling irrelevant in your fifties and refusing to let that word back in. Along th