After posting about Glee's de-transed version of the Rocky Horror Show yesterday, I thought I'd look up Richard O'Brien, who played Riff Raff and wrote the musical, and see if he identified as L, G, B, T, or Q. I knew O'Brien was married to a woman and thought he was either bisexual or a straight guy who just liked queer culture, but I didn't know this:

He said: "All my life, I've been fighting never belonging, never being male or female, and it got to the stage where I couldn't deal with it any longer. To feel you don't belong... to feel insane... to feel perverted and disgusting... you go f***ing nuts.

"If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn't be a problem. I don't think the term 'transvestite' or 'transsexual' would exist: you'd just be another human being."

"I'd been fighting, going to therapy, treating what I was as though it were some kind of illness to be cured. But actually, no, I was basically transgender, and just unhappy."

O'Brien, who uses transgender to describe feeling "in between" being a man or a woman, added: "There is a continuum between male and female. Some are hard-wired one way or another, I'm in between. Or a third sex, I could see myself as quite easily."