Seven famous – and infamous – British people that you probably didn’t realise were bisexual
Clockwise, from top left: Pam St Clement, Mel B, Alec Guinness, Julie Goodyear and John Lennon (ITV/BBC/Lucasfilm/Getty)
It’s Bisexual Awareness Week, and so – to get into the spirit of things – we thought we’d make you aware of some bisexual people that you might not have realised identified as bi.
One huge issue that bisexual people face is “bi-erasure”, where their bisexual identity is played down and they’re either reported to be straight, gay or lesbian – when in fact they are bisexual.
Bisexual Awareness Week attempts to combat this ‘erasure’ of bisexual people from mainstream culture and entertainment, and is celebrated with events around the world. Here are some bisexual figures from the UK.
Pam St Clement
Pam St Clement is an actress famous for playing Pat Butcher on iconic soap EastEnders for over 25 years.
Appearing in 2,183 episodes of the soap, Pat Butcher was famed for her feisty attitude, tumultuous relationships and trademark earrings.
The actress opened up about her bisexuality in her 2015 autobiography, The End of an Earring – where she revealed that she had an affair with a woman while married to her first husband in 1975.
She wrote: “I fell for an attractive woman who was intelligent, witty and fun to be with.”
The soap star also highlighted her involvement in founding Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ rights charity and campaigns for equality saying “striving for justice and fairness for all seems logical.”
The Kray twins
Twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray were renowned East End gangsters who, as part of their gang ‘The Firm’, were involved in armed robberies, protection rackets and murders.
They achieved fame throughout the 1960s, appearing in television interviews, as well as being photographed by David Bailey.
The pair continued to find fame behind bars, selling stories about romances with women to the tabloids after they were both jailed for life. The sexuality of both twins has long been speculated upon.
As addressed in the Tom Hardy film Legend, Ronnie was famed for parading his younger male lovers in public, and spoke on various occasions of being gay or bisexual.
However, there has since been speculation that in fact both twins had sex with men, and they are often noted as part of LGBTQ+ and bisexual history.
Julie Goodyear
Julie Goodyear is best known for playing Bet Lynch in Coronation Street for 25 years (with brief comebacks in 2002 and 2003), and she’s been very open about being LGBTQ+.
Speaking about her bisexuality, Goodyear said that it was as much a surprise to her as to anyone else.
She met a woman in a club shortly after divorcing her second husband and embarked on a relationship with her. She said: “We started going out. Our three-year relationship became like a marriage.”
Mel B
Spice Girls star Mel B has had relationships with both men and women, and previously had a five-year relationship with film producer Christine Crokos.
Mel B, whose real name is Melanie Brown, said: “I do think that dating women is very different to dating men… I had a five-year relationship with a woman and it was an intense five years, but it was actually a really beautiful five years.
“We barely kind of argued, because we both thought the same, wanted the same out of life. It was really interesting when I actually compare it to my other relationships.”
Alec Guinness
Iconic British Star Wars actor Sir Alec Guinness passed away in 2000. The year after his death, three new biographies all stated that Guinness was bisexual, a fact that he managed to keep secret during his lifetime.
He was charged with a homosexual act in a public lavatory in 1946, but managed to keep the episode out of the public eye, according to the BBC.
His biographers say his bisexuality had “always been known” to family and friends. Guinness married his artist wife Merula in 1938 and they had one child together.
Amanda Barrie
Another Corrie bicon is Amanda Barrie, who played Alma Baldwin in the long-running ITV soap for around 20 years.
In 2022, she said she thought she would have been fired from the soap if she had come out as bisexual during the 1980s. She finally came out as bisexual at the age of 67 in her autobiography It’s Not a Rehearsal, in 2003.
Speaking on the Conversation Street podcast, Amanda Barrie said she hid her sexuality on the show for fear that her colleagues would refuse to work with her.
She said: “I spent a fortune on solicitors because believe me if that had happened to me at that time they would not have kept me in Coronation Street and I will stand by that.”
John Lennon
Beatles legend John Lennon’s most famous romantic relationship was, of course, with Yoko Ono, which means that some people assume that he was straight. That’s not the case.
Yoko Ono has said the she and John Lennon were in agreement that everyone is pretty much “born bisexual”, and that we are taught to limit ourselves at a young age due to community and cultural pressures. Ono went on to say “I think he had a desire to (have sex with men), but I think he was too inhibited.”
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