Broadcaster Brendan Courtney has said he has been left "completely shaken" after being punched to the ground and kicked in the head and face during a random attack close to his home in Dublin city last night.
Speaking on RTÉ's Liveline, he said the incident happened at around 9pm when he was walking home at the junction of Usher Street and Queen Street.
"I just remember it was a white car, I don't know what kind of car it was. Three lads in it and one of them wound down the passenger window and said something to me and I just sort of said 'hello' or whatever back.
"And next of all from behind, the driver and then the guy in the back jumped out and kicked me to the ground and punched me and kicked me in the head about five or six times."
Mr Courtney said while he was on the ground, he felt "a boot to the side of my head, a boot to the back of my head and a boot right in my face".
He said an American woman who was nearby screamed and the culprits got back into the car and drove off.
Mr Courtney said the manager of a nearby bar who had witnessed the attack brought him into the bar.
"I didn't know what was going on, it was just so surreal.
"They were driving and stopped at the lights so I don't think they were coming to find me or anything like that. I think just they got a notion and jumped out and I can't believe it in this day and age."
Asked if he thought the three men recognised who he was, Mr Courtney said: "I think so, yeah."
Attackers were 'out for the hunt'
"And I was just coming from a gig, so I was wearing particularly fancy clothes... I'm sure I looked particularly flamboyant but I was just going along, minding me own business."
He said all he could hear his attackers saying was "get him" which he described as "absolute madness".
Gardaí have CCTV footage and he will be meeting with them on Monday to file a report, he said.
He said he believes they were "out for the hunt" that "they were going out to lash someone out of it, that's for sure".
"I think they recognised me and I think that was perfect fodder. That's my feeling, I could be wrong, I could have just been a very obviously gay man with his chips walking across the bridge.
"So, maybe that was just the target, but I definitely feel that was happy slaps...obviously really horrible, dangerous and frightening".
He said that although we have a "very tolerant society" for lots of reasons, he can definitely feel "an anti-gay rhetoric" building.
"We're all tired of this nonsense, you know," he added.
He told Joe Duffy as he was being interviewed on Liveline that he was currently standing outside A&E, waiting for a CT scan on his head.
He said he got very upset this morning when he processed it and when he went to A&E, he "burst into tears" when he was with the triage nurse.
He said gardaí were on the scene in "two minutes" and they were "brilliant".
In a statement, gardaí said they attended the scene of an assault on a man, aged in his 50s, on Usher's Quay in Dublin 8 shortly after 9.30pm on yesterday evening.
They said the man did not require immediate medical attention and that investigations are ongoing.
