Proudly Said

John Hyland
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Proudly Said is about being LGBTQ+ in the UK without compromise. Hosted by John Hyland (he/they), a Liverpool-born activist and advocate, the show brings real conversations to the forefront. No studios, no scripts - just people, where they’re most at home, speaking in their own words. Each episode centres voices you don’t hear enough, talking about what it means to live out loud, hold space, and just live. There’s no performance. Just queer stories, proudly said.

  1. 6d ago

    Ep 63: Warren Allmark said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Warren Allmark is a founding member and chairperson of Chester Pride, a drag artist known as Wanda Why, and the driving force behind the Rainbow Tea Rooms, Chester Pride's own LGBTQ+ community café in the heart of the city. He has tried to leave Chester Pride twice. He has not succeeded. Recorded at the Rainbow Tea Rooms, where a memorial to The Vivienne adds to the atmosphere and a homophobic squatter interrupts briefly. Warren joins John to tell the story of how Chester Pride came to be, from a simple ask by the late landlord of the Liverpool Arms to help book some acts, to 15 years as the last surviving founding member of an organisation he has shepherded through financial difficulty, a cancelled year, and a political landscape that has only grown more hostile. He talks frankly about what it actually costs to put on a Pride event in 2026, why the idea that Pride should always be free has become increasingly disconnected from reality, and what rising artist fees are doing to smaller Prides across the country. The conversation covers a lot of ground: the Gender Blender nightclub nights he ran and eventually walked away from without a second thought, the Rainbow Tea Rooms and why a community café outside the nighttime economy matters more now than when they opened it, and Chester Pride's decision to ban national political parties from marching while keeping the door of the Tea Rooms open for surgeries and accountability. Warren is also candid about the community's internal fractures, the LGB without the T argument, and why he thinks solidarity is not optional right now. There is also a genuinely moving thread about what it means to be part of something for 15 years, to have built something that belongs to a whole community, and to not quite be ready to hand it over yet. Funny, opinionated, completely direct, and very good company. It's an hour that goes past quickly, a conversation about community, pride in all senses, and what it actually takes to keep the lights on. Find out more at https://chesterpride.co.uk 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  2. Aug 6

    Ep 62: AJ West said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? A.J. West is a Sunday Times bestselling author, award-winning former BBC journalist, and, as he puts it himself, the world's foremost queer bookshop historian. He joins John at Liverpool Central Library, just ahead of a sold-out evening with the Proud Readers Book Club, to talk about his new nonfiction book, How Queer Bookshops Changed the World. And they did change the world. AJ makes a compelling case from the off: it was a queer bookseller who organised the first Pride march, another who orchestrated the Stonewall uprising, and it was Gays the Word in London that took on the government and helped change obscenity laws. The rights many people take for granted now were won, in no small part, by people selling books. The conversation covers all of this with genuine warmth and infectious enthusiasm, taking in stories from 1700s London all the way to the queer bookshop renaissance happening right now. But there's also a much more personal story here. AJ talks about growing up bookish and lonely in a football-dominated school that didn't exactly encourage ambition, finding his way into journalism, and the period he spent as a contestant on Big Brother, which he describes with great candour, including the housemate he slept next to who turned out to be Andrew Tate, and what it felt like to come out of that show with his relationship in tabloid headlines and his life in pieces. It was rock bottom that gave him the push to finally write. The conversation ends up somewhere genuinely moving: about chasing dreams when you have nothing to lose, the quiet bravery of people who build spaces for others without ever wanting the credit, and why queer history is still so worth telling. Also, John says "projectory" three times and AJ cannot let it go. It's warm, funny, brilliantly nerdy in all the right ways, and a proper treat of a conversation. Check out AJ's website HERE. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  3. Jul 30

    Ep 61: Skarlett Skandal said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Skarlett Skandal is a Carrickfergus-born, Liverpool-made bearded drag queen and DJ, currently making her way back home to Northern Ireland after eight years of nights, stages and dance floors across Merseyside. She calls herself the Bearded Bratz Doll. She is not wrong. Recorded backstage at Heaven prior to Big Gay Cabaret, Skarlett joins John for a conversation that covers a lot of ground at pace, which is exactly what you'd expect from someone who openly credits ADHD for how her brain works. She talks about coming from Carrickfergus, growing up in a mixed Catholic and Protestant household just a month after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, and how Liverpool felt like home from the moment she arrived for university, where she was, by the way, studying zoology. They get into how Skarlett fell into drag during lockdown, built a reputation on the Liverpool scene as one of the few drag queen DJs working the circuit, and why having a niche matters more than ever when the nighttime economy is under pressure and the market is saturated. She talks about reading a room, building community with other queens, and the moment she very reluctantly agreed to become a drag mother to Pumpkin Skandal. There's also the next chapter: a Belfast debut she is equal parts excited and terrified about, a potential future as a literal zookeeper, and the kind of honest, chaotic, very funny chat that happens when two people are clearly just enjoying themselves. It's big energy, total chaos, and genuinely brilliant craic. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  4. Jul 23

    Ep 60: Mac Wynter said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Mac Wynter is a musician, animator, freelance illustrator, event organiser, teacher, and the founder of Stripped MCR and QuAC, a UK-based queer arts collective. He also used to go by Mickey Taylor, but Mickey's dead now. He said so himself. Mac joins John ten years after their first on-camera conversation, and wastes no time catching up on a decade of reinvention. From a former career in the adult industry and touring music to going back to university at 29 to study animation, Mac talks about what it looks like to genuinely start over, the skill sets that travel with you whether people respect them or not, and why he still thrives on pressure even when it probably shouldn't work. They get into the creative world's darker side too: the mental health toll of pouring yourself into art, the threat of AI to a generation of animators, and what it means to keep building when the industry keeps shifting under your feet. Mac talks about his children's books, his autism diagnosis, and how working in animation led him back to teaching kids the things he didn't have growing up. There's also the queer arts scene in Manchester, the nudist cabaret niche he somehow spotted and ran with, and a lot of unfinished business he fully intends to come back for. He's chaotic, hilarious, and exactly as much as he was ten years ago, in all the best ways. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  5. Jul 16

    Ep 59: Ruby Boy said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Ruby Boy is a Yorkshire-born, Doncaster-raised drag queen, DJ, host and event producer, who relocated to Liverpool in early 2025 and has been quietly building something rather brilliant ever since. Recorded at the Epstein Theatre bar straight after a brunch show, with Proseccos already well underway. Ruby joins John to talk about her journey from selling shots at 18 in Lincoln, through five years of residencies across the Midlands, to arriving in Liverpool and starting from scratch all over again. She's honest about what that actually looks like: cover shifts, patience, travel that costs more than it pays, and the slow work of building a reputation in a city where the gig economy for drag queens is tighter than it looks from the outside. A big part of Ruby's story right now is Big Gay Cabaret, the Liverpool show she co-produces with drag partner Carmen Sutra. What started as filling a gap in the city's cabaret scene has grown into something with real momentum, and Ruby talks about why they built it, how it nearly broke them when 20 competition slots filled in nine hours, and why keeping drag silly is the whole point. There's also the engagement story, which involves Rome, a fight, a ring that hadn't arrived, and a proposal that was equal parts romantic and deeply traumatic. It's exactly as good as it sounds. It's loud, funny, completely unfiltered, and a genuinely warm conversation about building a drag career on your own terms in a city that's becoming home. Make sure to follow their instagram! 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  6. Jul 7

    Ep 58: Lizzy Maginness said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Lizzy Maginness joins John from the top floor of Gaydio Towers (really the Manchester One buildings, but Gaydio Towers sounds so much better!), looking out across Manchester… and reflecting on a career that’s taken her from rural Lincolnshire to the heart of the UK’s media and LGBTQ+ landscape. Now Commercial Manager at Gaydio, Lizzy shares her journey through some of the country’s biggest radio brands, from early marketing roles to leading major campaigns, live events, and national partnerships. She talks about helping bring Pride into the mainstream spotlight, including her role in building one of the first major media partnerships with Manchester Pride, and what it meant to broadcast those celebrations to audiences across the UK. But this conversation goes far beyond career highlights. Lizzy opens up about coming out later in life, the experience of growing up without visible queer representation, and how moving to Manchester helped shape her understanding of identity. From “Lesbian TikTok” moments to meeting her now wife just weeks after coming out, her story is honest, funny, and quietly powerful. Together, John and Lizzy explore the balance between grassroots and large-scale Pride, the importance of authentic representation in marketing, and what it really means to connect with LGBTQ+ audiences in a way that goes beyond surface-level visibility. It’s a conversation about timing, identity, and finding your place… even if it takes a little longer than expected. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  7. Jul 2

    Ep 57: Dan (Proud Readers Book Club) said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Dan Roberts is a Liverpool librarian and the founder of the Proud Readers Book Club, an LGBTQ+ reading group that meets monthly in the Hornby Reading Room at Liverpool Central Library. In less than a year it has grown from a nerve-wracking first night where Dan wasn't sure anyone would show up, to a thriving community of 25 to 30 members and a shortlisting for a national Libraries Connected Award. Filmed in the stunning Oak Room at Central Library, Dan joins John to talk about how the book club came to be, why it quickly became about much more than books, and what it means to create a space where queer people can show up as themselves without performing for anyone. They get into the reading list, from Oscar Wilde to contemporary queer fiction, and why being pushed outside your comfort zone is half the point. The conversation also covers the bigger picture of what Dan is building: partnerships with Homotopia Festival, the LGBT Foundation, and upcoming outreach workshops across Liverpool and Manchester. The Proud Readers Book Club is quietly becoming a serious force for queer culture and community in the city. There's also a very honest and very funny thread running through it all about the pressure queer people feel to be performative, why Dan's ideal weekend involves Miss Marple and two dogs, and why he is absolutely, unapologetically a Golden Girl at heart. It's warm, funny, and quietly inspiring, a conversation about the power of creating something from nothing and watching it become exactly what your community needed. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

  8. Jun 25

    Ep 56: Kyle Clarke said

    🎙️ What’s This Episode About? Kyle Clarke is a talent manager, producer, and the founder of DFIU Events, a drag and entertainment events company that has been putting on shows across the UK for five years. Kyle joins John to tell the story of how DFIU came to be: born in lockdown, built on relationships forged through interviewing RuPaul's Drag Race queens online, and grown into a touring events business with genuine industry clout. He talks about what it actually takes to run shows, the logistics, the contracts, the stress behind the sequins, and why the nighttime economy is in a more fragile state than audiences realise. They get into the realities of the drag events world: last-minute ticket buying culture, the financial risks promoters carry, and what it means to rebuild audience trust in an industry that's taken knocks. Kyle is candid about the hard moments too, including the times he's had to cancel shows and why protecting the business is what keeps it going. There's also the personal story: a wee gay boy from North Belfast, now two years into life in Manchester, with a coming-out story that wasn't his to control and a family that surprised him. Kyle reflects on identity, ambition, and what it means to build something on your own terms, with the chaos, the laughs, and the receipts to prove it. It's sharp, funny, and refreshingly no-nonsense, a conversation about what it really takes to put queer joy on a stage and keep it there. 🗣️ Why Listen? If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives. 📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk Subscribe: Stay updated with new episodes. Share: If this resonates with you, share it with others who might find it meaningful. Feedback: We value your thoughts. Reach out with comments or suggestions. Support: Join The Front Row for less than £3 a month, supporting a local queer creator, or buy us a bespoke coffee or three! :)

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Proudly Said is about being LGBTQ+ in the UK without compromise. Hosted by John Hyland (he/they), a Liverpool-born activist and advocate, the show brings real conversations to the forefront. No studios, no scripts - just people, where they’re most at home, speaking in their own words. Each episode centres voices you don’t hear enough, talking about what it means to live out loud, hold space, and just live. There’s no performance. Just queer stories, proudly said.

Information

  • Creator
    John Hyland
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    64
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Proudly Said
  • Show Website
    Proudly Said