We’d met on the set of a student production of Romeo and Juliet. I was helping out on the administrative side of things (I was too shy to tell anyone I wanted to be a performer) and Adam was playing the Friar. How anyone could manage to turn a character as pious and earnest as that into a cross between Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served? and Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is anyone’s guess, but Adam did it. He was the loudest, brashest, bravest person I had ever met. I never had the courage to actively befriend him, I just hovered around him long enough that, by the time he noticed me, he simply assumed I was part of his entourage. From that time on, we wasted enormous chunks of our lives together, watching cable TV, gossiping, window shopping and fighting over the last biscuit in the packet. It was Adam who helped me to acclimatise to life in the big smoke: talking me through the etiquette of nightclubs; teaching me how to ride a tram without falling over; helping me to tell the difference between gay men and straight men.
