Blue singer Duncan James has said that the band’s mostly female fanbase made it more difficult for him to come out.
James came out as bisexual in 2009 and has more recently described himself as gay.
Speaking to Rylan Clark on Clark’s podcast Ry-Union, the musician opened up about the difficulties he faced in addressing his sexuality publicly.
“I think being in such a public boy band, with the majority of fans being female, it was really hard for me to actually have the courage to come out,” he said, “because I was scared on so many different levels on so many different things.
“And, to be honest, I didn’t quite understand too much about my own sexuality at that time, I was just really confused.”
He added that he was “all over the place” at the height of Blue’s fame, but that coming out was the “best thing” he had ever done.
“We didn’t have any kind of television programmes that embraced the LGBT+ community back then, you know,” he said. “There was no RuPaul’s Drag Race, there was no TV shows like It’s A Sin.
“You know, I think the closest thing we got to anybody being a gay icon was Nadia (Almada) from Big Brother. She was the original in many ways.”
He continued: “It wasn’t until, I guess, people were being visible on our screens that it gave me the kind of strength and the courage to actually think, ‘Right, I need to be visible too’.”
Additional Reporting by PA
