In fact, it's always been a bit of a joke in our family that my dad was responsible - he frequently dressed me up as a girl. Over the years, we've talked about many of the theories that may explain what makes a person gay. Growing up in the Barrowman household, conversations about sexuality were never taboo. While they were ogling the well-endowed female models, I couldn't take my eyes off the male members in the shot. I was nine and a few of my friends were looking at some mild porn in the playground during recess.
I remember vividly when I first realised I was gay. However, just because I'm comfortable with my sexuality doesn't mean that I'm not curious about it and that's one of the reasons I agreed to take this journey to discover the making of me. I'm in a committed relationship with the love of my life, Scott Gill, and he is as much a part of the family as my sister's husband, Kevin, and my brother's wife, Dot. My sexuality has never been deliberately hidden. As my favourite Jerry Herman song proclaims: "There's no return and no deposit. And, whenever I can, I try to confront the monsters in the dark. As simple as the story is I think it's an apt metaphor for the way I've chosen to live my life - openly, honestly, with no regrets. Depending on who's doing the telling, Uncle John was either locked up for 30 fleeting minutes or for three long, tortuous, oxygen-starved hours. This story still gets a laugh from my nieces and nephews. I mean what baby brother has ever annoyed his siblings to the point of needing to be locked up or tied down? I was five and my brother, Andrew, then 10, and my sister, Carole, 13, had shoved me into the coat closet because, well, really for absolutely no good reason. Plus, I was convinced I wasn't alone (a crumpled jacket lurking in the corner looked pretty dangerous).
It was dark, uncomfortable, and really cramped. I was in the closet for three hours once in 1972. But was he born that way or did his upbringing have something to do with it? Here, he explains why he set out to try to solve this mystery, for the BBC One show The Making of Me. Torchwood star John Barrowman has known he was gay since he was nine. Barrowman: On a quest to find out about his sexuality