Ryan and I met working behind the tills in HMV Cork in the winter of 2009. We bonded instantly, and as we are both natural romantics, began the process of myth-making in our friendship while it was still slippery from birth. We moved in together quickly. We began writing a sitcom based on our lives, then got stoned and paranoid about being sued by former co-workers when we became famous. We left long Facebook posts on each other’s walls, quoting the things we said to one another, terrified that our specialness and our closeness would not be noticed or rewarded by the wider world. We wanted them to say: you two really have something here.
We were 19, and we were insufferable. But there was a lot of that kind of thing around. Bright young women and their even brighter gay friends were burning up our screens. There was Will & Grace, of course, and there was Stanford Blatch from Sex and The City. There was Stanley Tucci’s Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada, and Damian in Mean Girls, and Rupert Everett’s George in My Best Friend’s Wedding. We opened Word documents, centre-aligned the text and transcribed ourselves.
