As a teenager, Norman was very confused about his sexuality. “I thought I was gay because I fancied men, like pop stars. But later, I started to like girls as well,” he says. When his parents found out, he was sent to a psychiatrist for conversion therapy, and although his feelings for men never went away, in 1972 he met and fell in love with the woman he would later marry. When she died in 2017, he was devastated. “We lived for each other and loved each other. I was totally lost because we’d done everything together.”
It wasn’t until two years later that Norman began to think about coming out as bisexual. “I’m a volunteer cultural champion at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester,” he says. “A new coordinator from an LGBTQ+ foundation had come in and said they were looking for volunteers aged over 60 to make videos about what life was like in the 1950s and 60s for gay people.” Ever since he was young, Norman had wanted to be open about who he was, and it finally felt like the right time. “I just wanted the world to know I was bisexual,” he says.
