Bake Off star Tamal shares his ‘awkard, honest’ coming out experience
GBBO star Tamal Ray has opened up about coming out as gay.
The finalist won thousands of fans when he appeared on the hit BBC One show earlier this year – including a huge gay following after he opened up about his sexuality.
He has spoken more about his coming out experiences in a recent blog post – saying that going to university changed things for the young anaesthetist.
“I started to become comfortable with who I was and being gay,” he writes on Huffington Post.
“And then I started to tell other people and hey, the world didn’t cave in, and people were ok with it. More than ok actually, really lovely and supportive.”
The star said that although the conversations were often “canyons of awkwardness” the freedom he feels since having them are immeasurable. He can even reveal his TV crushes.
“Although the actual coming out conversations themselves were giant canyons of awkwardness, the little freedoms they gave me were priceless: to be able to talk about relationships honestly or make a passing comment about which character on The OC was the hottest (Seth, obviously).”
Tamal admits that he was most worried about how his straight, male friends would react to the news. However, he was pleasantly surprised.
“Would I lose any of them over this?” he writes.
“Those early conversations were difficult but being honest and willing to talk about my most private thoughts had an effect I hadn’t foreseen.
“Those guys, who I’d worried might turn cold, did the opposite.”
Tamal subtly revealed his sexuality during a Radio Times interview in September.
After being asked if he’d date a female ‘Bake Off’ fan, he responded: “I wouldn’t have a girlfriend, I would have a boyfriend. But I am single at the moment.”
Tamal was eventually pipped to the post by fellow contestant Nadiya, who wowed the judges with her culinary creations.
However, not everybody responded well to the win – or the inclusion of either Tamal or Nadiya in the final.
Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell took aim at the BBC One show, claiming that the pair only made it to the final because of the “PC triumph”.
The Sun unsurprisingly went a step further, saying the fact that Nadiya won amounts to “idealogical warfare”.
Ally Ross wrote that BBC producers “no doubt did a multi-cultural jig of politically-correct joy” when Nadiya was announced as the winner.
