TV host Trisha Goddard opens up about parenting a non-binary child: ‘I’m still learning’
TV host Trisha Goddard has a non-binary child. (Getty)
TV and radio host Trisha Goddard has spoken candidly about supporting her non-binary child, and revealed how the LGBTQ+ community inspired her hit talk show.
Goddard appeared on Virgin Radio’s “My Pride Playlist” segment yesterday (15 July), speaking to host Steve Denyer about her relationship with the community.
Her youngest child, who works in the National Health Service and as a drag king, identifies as queer and non-binary. “Their journey through being bullied, through their queer journey, I, as a parent, went on it,” the former host of The Trisha Goddard Show said.
“I am still learning. Their sister and I are still learning. Often, I slip up. They have gone from being cross with me to understanding that I am doing my best, as long as I am doing my best,” she added.
Goddard, who also hosted Australian children’s show Play School in the late eighties and early nineties, before joining TalkTV in the UK, went on to share a story of meeting a queer interracial couple while partying in Sydney in 1994.
She met Kevin and Madison and made a comment about how lovely it was to see two men, one Black and one white, living out and proud at a time where both interracial and queer relationships were still stigmatised.
“Those two have been in my life ever since. They are my children’s de-facto godparents. They have flown to England [from New Zealand]. They have been there for my kids… they’re very special to me.”
Goddard’s years of LGBTQ+ allyship included advocating around HIV/Aids and speaking up for trans people.
“The world in which I was most held and accepted was not just the gay world, but the trans world, and non-binary [world],” she shared, adding that while at a club once, she was “rescued” by a group of queer people
They served as the inspiration for The Trisha Goddard Show, which is arguably what she is best-known for in the UK.
“I was kind of rescued by a little LGBT group of trans, [non]-binary, everyone and they used to sit on the floor and discuss problems. Let me tell you, that was the beginning of my talk show,” she revealed.
Goddard has spoken before about supporting her child through their gender journey, telling TV presenter Kaye Adams on the podcast How to Be 60 that it has been a learning process.
“I could understand gay. I could understand I had a gay daughter – a queer daughter as they call it now,” she said. “Then I had to learn the ‘I don’t feel male, I don’t feel female’ kind of thing. I had to wrap my head around it.”
In February, she also revealed that she had been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, which is treatable, but not curable.
