‘I had to learn to give myself permission to be happy’: Attitude’s editor-in-chief on coming out, the AIDS crisis, and marriage

Attitude editor-in-chief Cliff Joannou has opened up about his coming out, growing up queer under the shadow of the AIDS crisis, and his upcoming wedding, in one of two launch episodes of the Attitude Presents: Out with Suzi Ruffell podcast.

Attitude Presents: Out with Suzi Ruffell is available now on all major podcast platforms and on the Attitude YouTube channel.

Joannou, who has been editor at Attitude for eight years, spoke candidly about the psychological weight of coming of age during the 1990s as a closeted gay man from a Greek Cypriot family in south London.

“I remember those tombstone adverts,” he said, referring to the government’s early HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. “To a young closeted gay guy, it meant my sexuality, the process of using my body for pleasure, meant death.”

Despite being privately aware of his sexuality from a young age, Joannou didn’t come out to his family until he was 27, a year after his father’s death, when a cousin’s gossip forced the conversation with his mother.

“It was just an affirmation of who I was,” he said. “I don’t see it as a clutch-of-pearls moment.”

He also shared that he’s getting married this year to his long-term partner, after three years of engagement – drag icon Johnny Woo will officiate the ceremony. “It feels right,” Joannou said, when asked by podcast host Suzi Ruffell why he chose to get married. “I am marrying the person that I absolutely love.”

On the broader experience of being a queer man of his generation, he reflected: “I have had to learn to give myself permission to be happy, [after] years of oppression and just being told I didn’t have a right to be happy.”