IT STARTED WITH Daryl Hannah. When I was five, my dad took me to Blockbuster to rent a VHS (apologies to anyone under 20 who just had to google two of the first 19 words) and I chose Splash, despite an earlier disappointment with 1990 classic Mermaids, which, for the record, contains zero actual mermaids but does include Cher slapping Winona.
Splash stars Daryl as Madison, a mermaid so determined to get her hands on Tom Hanks’s D that she trades her tail for legs and embarks on a stalking campaign of such intensity that it would make Conor Kennedy-era Taylor Swift blush. Obviously I was hooked. To this day, when I’m stressed at work, I YouTube clips of Madison making her majestic way along the seabed. I find it calming. This is who I am. My other early favourite was The Little Mermaid, both the 1989 Disney animation and the 1975 Manga version. For each year’s summer holiday in Falmouth, I demanded a new Ariel Barbie, and was openly horrified by how badly my cousin Holly maintained her doll’s hair.
As you’ve no doubt gathered, every part of my childhood screamed gay — and this was before I knew that Ursula the sea witch was based on Divine.