Gary Glitter and me

History can make us see things differently. Through the prism of time, sometimes, something you were so sure meant one thing, can forever mean the opposite.

Sometimes we don’t even want to know the truth. Like when you discover there’s no Father Christmas (spoiler alert). You cling on to the fairy tale, the version of Christmas that’s so much better than reality. The man in the North Pole with the Elves, The Sleigh and The Reindeer; the story that’s so much better than your parents queuing miserably at Argos. Deep down, we all want a world where the elves make the toys for us.

Even when I found out the truth about Santy, as he’s known in Ireland, and proceeded to ruin it for my sister, not only by telling her he wasn’t real but going so far as to show her where Mam and Dad hid the presents, part of me still wanted to believe in him.

When I was scolded for ruining all my sister’s Christmases at once, I still wanted to believe Santy would tumble down the chimney in the early hours of Christmas morning and make it all right. The shame of being told off would disappear in a puff of smoke. Belief brings release from the dull reality of the world, after all.

That’s why a part of me still believes in Gary Glitter.

Saying his name, writing it down here, is loaded. What that name once meant — to me, and to many of us — is lost in time. Now it’s a dirty word, shrouded in the shame of crimes too depraved to fathom.