Bradley Brock is from Ballina in Mayo and recently featured on Alison Spittle’s Culchie Club with his mother Valerie. Bradley performs drag as Neon Love. Bradley and Valerie both joined Ray D’Arcy to talk about RuPaul, protestors and pet farms.
Bradley remembers his mother sitting him down when he was a teenager and asking him if there was anything he wanted to tell her. He was being bullied at boarding school and had withdrawn into himself.
“I really hated myself. Like, at the age that I was, for someone as young as I was, to actually hate yourself…that shouldn’t be a thing that should be around…the only escape I had from that reality was going home at the weekend.”
Bradley told his mother he was gay, saying he “always knew she would accept it”. But the nerves were still there. Valerie said she was “relieved” when he told her because she had been worried about him.
“He’d gone right down where no kid that age should be.”
Performing as Neon Love gives Bradley a chance to explore a “completely different character”, he told Ray.
“Me sitting in front of people today would be different to what Neon would be sitting in front of people.”
Listen back to the whole conversation on The Ray D’Arcy Show here.