Joni on The Late Late

In 1980, 26 year-old Joni Crone, became the irst Irish lesbian to go on The Late Late Show and talk about her life. Half way through that iconic interview, she started getting pissed of, she tells Brian Finnegan.

On a Saturday night in 1980, as the nation watched The Late Late Show, Gay Byrne introduced the final segment of the night, saying: “Now ladies and gentlemen our final guest is Joni. I am not going to tell you Joni’s surname, but Joni is a lesbian and she wants to talk to us about the situation she finds herself in being a lesbian.”

I was sitting on the floor by the fire in my pyjamas, my parents on their chairs either side of me, my brothers lined up on the sofa, and I wondered if they could hear my heart hammering.

I knew I was different, I knew I liked other boys, and I’d heard of lesbians, girls who liked other girls, but up until that moment the only homosexual I had ever seen on TV was a high-camp figure of fun on a sitcom called Are You Being Served?, who made me feel sick about myself.

A man came up to me in a bar, and he said, ‘I always wanted to meet you and say thanks, because you saved my life

“You don’t have any reservations about talking to us?” Gay asked the young woman sitting opposite him. She smiled, looked him in the eye, and said, “No.”

1980 was a bleak time if you were gay in Ireland. Seven years before David Norris brought and won European Court of Human Rights case against the Irish government for the criminalisation of homosexuality, and 13 years before decriminalisation legislation was passed in 1993, there was nevertheless a sturdy band of activists pushing the agenda forward. Joni’s decision to share her life with the millions of Irish viewers who religiously watched The Late Late Show, was born of this movement.