“The idea that you can’t talk about it because you were lucky to be at a prep school just tied into this sense of shame. “For years, I thought, ‘Well, I can’t talk about it and make a documentary, because it’s all linked to privilege, but now I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Young, who didn’t tell his parents what happened to him, but says they would have taken him from the school immediately, wants his next big project to be a documentary about boarding schools as an institution. I made some amazing, astonishing friendships, it was like we were in an awful club together, because it was dreadful what we experienced.” “I’m so proud we survived, because we both lived through horror – but it didn’t break him and it didn’t break me. “My screensaver on my phone is me at age 12 with my oldest friend from prep school, who I’m seeing tomorrow night,” he says. One of the things that happened to him, and to which he traces his PTSD, was being sent to board at prep school in the 80s, where he says he was subjected to inappropriate behaviour. Processing what happened to me has been my proudest achievement.”
Young says he is now reaping “huge benefits” from the therapy he has had. It’s easy for me to say that people should get therapy, but I’m aware it’s not easy.” “The waiting lists and box-ticking people go through for help – and it doesn’t even scratch the surface. “In this country we don’t have a clue how intensely mental health services are needed,” he says. When his twin brother Rupert took his own life in 2020 at the age of 41, Young made a heart-wrenching, nuanced Channel 4 documentary about the nuances of his brother’s two decades of alcoholism, painkiller addiction and depression and spoke about the experience of caring for Rupert alongside a “woefully underfunded” NHS. He has spent at least £500,000 on therapy, including visiting a shaman. Around nine years ago he had a breakdown, after years of anxiety, and more recently he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet being himself has not always been easy for Young either. Will Young: ‘I do embrace my insecurities” (Photo: Joseph Sinclair) I wasn’t very good at it, so I just decided to be myself.” I did for a while, a few years ago, try to be really cool, and hang out with cool, famous people, but I was miserable. I went to the Central St Martin’s graduate show last night and my picture got taken, then Madonna rocks up and I’m like, ‘Oh, gosh, people must be thinking I’m still very relevant,’ but that’s just my ego.
“I do embrace my insecurities, and I get a bit of a dopamine rush from certain things. “Ohhh, they probably know nothing about me!” he says, as if it’s an absurd idea. Two decades on, now 42, does Young, who experienced such an outpouring of love from teenagers of the day, ever worry about what Gen Z think of him? “It was naive in a great way,” he says, “and people feel like they discovered the show, because it started with a few hundred thousand viewers, and ended up with 14 million.”
Vintage gay porn pool party series#
Young, who won the ITV reality show as a 22-year-old politics graduate with 8.7 million public votes, talks about the series with real warmth.