Linda Cullen irst came to prominence in 1990 with the irst Irish lesbian novel, The Kiss. Since then she’s become one half of the powerhouse behind Coco Television, which includes First Dates Ireland amongst its diverse roster of productions. Her latest project, The 34th, the story of the Marriage Equality organisation in Ireland, will debut as the opening ilm at this year’s GAZE.

I was born in the house I still live in and raised with three brothers. One of them tragically died when he was 21 and I was 17, and that informed a lot of my life. My father was an alcoholic, and he absconded for a number of years when I was quite young. I had an amazing mother. She was this ‘you can do anything’ type of mother.

I wrote songs when I was a kid. I had my guitar and my piano and I loved all that. I was on a TV show called Youngline singing one of them when I was 12 or 13, which was called ‘Children’. It was all about children needing love and all the wars in the world. I’m sure the footage is somewhere.