In the fight: Peter Tatchell
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)A dilemma. What do you do when Peter Tatchell stands in front of you and says: “Punch me in the stomach.”? This is a man who has been punched rather badly countless times in the course of a life in activism; who am I to add to all that? Gingerly I prod him. “No, properly”, he says. I give a gentle punch, enough to make his point: he has a tummy like iron. He turned 70 last month and he wants to make clear he’s in fine fettle. “I do 60-80 push-ups or sit-ups a day,” he says. He looks like a dapper Peter Pan. But he’s never been flamboyant; he’s rather…straight. “I’ve always just been me”, he says simply.
Tatchell has spent so much of his life as an enfant terrible, a scourge of the establishment, it’s hard to think that he’s now Mr National Treasure. He winces at the idea. “No, I am not going to be a National Treasure. They’re put in glass boxes. I’m not going to be put in a box.”
