Ollie Locke with husband Gareth. (Getty/ Jeff Spicer)
Ollie Locke has explained how Made in Chelsea pulled a scene of him coming out as bisexual to his mum for a very important reason.
A decade ago, Locke came out to Made in Chelsea co-star and best friend Binky Felstead, in the UK’s first “televised coming out”.
But in an op-ed for Metro during Pride month, the reality TV star has revealed that there was more to the moment that viewers thought.
When the series first began, he said, he told producers that he wanted his coming out to be part of the show, and “they were incredibly supportive and on board”, even bring in “lawyers, psychologists and other producers” to make sure he was ready.
His plan was to come out to his mum, who signed release forms without knowing what was about to happen, in front of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Palace Gardens.
“We set up next to the statue as organised and I told my mum I was bisexual,” he wrote.
“It felt like a big moment. Mum was immediately accepting. There’s a wonderful metaphor I have used before about coming out and The Wizard of Oz.
“It starts with life being all in black in white, but when you go over the rainbow, it takes on colour. It’s how I felt.”
But after they’d shot the scene, Locke began to notice changes in his mum, who was “so filled with worry she lost a stone in weight”.
It turned out that his mother was terrified of upsetting Locke’s grandmother, not because she would have had a problem with him being queer, but because she “lost her son to AIDs in the 80s“.
He explained that “Channel 4 were good enough to pull the scene”, and suggested he re-shoot it with someone else, which is how his iconic coming out scene with Felstead came to be.
When Ollie Locke realised he was gay, Binky Felstead came out for him.
Although he initially came out as bisexual, by 2016, Ollie Locke realised he way gay.
Faced with coming out a second time, he said that once again, “Binky played a pivotal role”.
Locke, Felstead and both of their mothers were in the South of France filming for Made in Chelsea, when he decided the moment was right.
“We sat around the table,” he said, “dodging the subject as I couldn’t quite muster the words.”
Suddenly Felstead blurted out: “For f**k’s sake, he’s gay!”
Locke, who married husband Gareth last year, said the moment was perfect.
“Everyone said, ‘Oh my God’, and then Mum went to the fridge and opened a bottle of champagne,” he wrote.
“It was quite sweet and everything I ever wanted.”