The House of Lords was debating the age of consent at the time, which was eventually equalised to 16 for gay couples. Then Beck’s beer, the sponsor, pulled out. After the first episode went out, we got flak in the press. Ironically enough, the programme itself did become an issue. ‘Stories that hadn’t been told’ … Russell T Davies.

It wasn’t an issue – she’d always known he was gay. One of my favourite moments was when Nathan’s mum discovers porn in his bedroom, and puts it back with a smile.

It was also about putting gay characters centre-stage, not in a “let’s-be-representative” way, but because I thought there were stories that hadn’t been told. We’ve all been young and stupid, or young and confident we’ve definitely all been young. All of us have been those people at one time or another. But they’re also three versions of the same man.

They’re very different: Stuart is the cocky, sexually confident one Vince a bit less sure of himself and Nathan, who’s 15, is just starting out. It felt like I’d been dying to write these men for years. I wrote the rest of the series, and bang – it was being filmed. My storyline about three men on the gay scene in late 1990s Manchester was accepted. A producer, Catriona MacKenzie, said: “Why don’t you put that experience at the heart of the script?” She was about to move to Channel 4, so it was remarkably simple. The subject matter – what it felt like to grow up as a gay man – had been bubbling up in nearly everything I wrote, but it took someone else to point out the obvious. The line comes from the film The Full Monty: there’s a scene between Robert Carlyle and Mark Addy, who are looking at a gay couple, and Mark’s character says: “Well, there’s nowt so queer as folk.” It stuck. In the end we went with the softer version, not because it was less confrontational – though I still don’t know what we’d have done if we had to talk about it on Richard and Judy – but because it felt like it suited the project. That title was on the front page of the very first script, and it lasted well into rehearsals. Queer as Folk’s original name was Queer as Fuck.

Cast of queer as folk