nia griffith, the labour mp for llanelli, who also came out when i did last year, and labour's chris bryantyou came outjust a year after i was born, not to make you feel old in any way! it makes me feel ancient. i'm so sorry. but you were really a pioneer for the lgbt community and obviously you made that very public declaration about your hiv status in 2005. how difficult was that both personally and professionally for you? for nine years, i was the only openly gay member of parliament. since then, i haven't regretted making that decision for a single moment. in terms of on the doorsteps in your constituency, what was the kind of response? were you concerned about that? was there any anxiety, were there any comments? i was terrified and no one had ever done this before, so i had no idea what the reaction was going to be. there was no social media in those days, thank goodness. but i did get letters from people all around the country and a lot of them were saying, "well done, congratulations". but the ones that really meant the most to me were the ones that said, "thank you, it has made it