Julian Simmons was on duty as UTV's continuity announcer when his mother passed away on Christmas Eve 7 years ago. "I couldn't ask anyone to step in for me at that stage," he said, "I had to do TV that night".
‘So there I was on television doing the updates with the undertaker beside me, 'do you want flowers' and all this sort of thing. It was bizarre. But my mother would have loved all that’.
Julian credits his mother and his Belfast roots for his black humour, as he told Ryan Tubridy this morning. He shot to fame in the 90's as UTV's quirky continuity announcer, introducing Emmerdale or Coronation Street with as much drama and intrigue as the soap itself.
As he told Ryan, his unique style was born over five days one Christmas when he didn't have to read the news and sport, leaving him with light entertainment. 'I thought I'd do it my way,' he said, 'I met the boss on the stairs who said, 'I like what you did'. Then they weaned me off the news. Julian was grateful to be relieved of his news reading duties.
‘When I used to read the news there were friends howling with laughter at me trying to keep my face straight. I was terrified I was going to laugh.'
Julian was very close to his mother, whom he lived with until she passed away. They never spoke about his sexuality, although he suspects she knew that he was gay.
'I never really needed to come out. I was always sort of out. My mother must have known….The subject was never broached. I never really indulged in anything romantic in front of my mother.'
Julian, who continues to work for ITV, said he never received homophobic abuse in his native Belfast, apart from one incident in which a man spat at him. 'The wind carried the spit and it landed on a woman six foot away from me,' he said, 'I learned to keep an impervious face to all of this a long time ago.'
To listen back to the full interview, click here.