Gay firefighter Nick Couch opened up about his fears of coming out to colleagues, including pretending to have a girlfriend.
In a video interview, the Honiton Fire Station staff member explained what it was like for him to come to terms with his sexuality.
“I knew for a long time that I was gay and to find the courage to tell all the guys on the station was going to be, sort of, a tough nut to crack,” Couch explained.
Since becoming a firefighter at the age of 18, he has spent 24 years working as one and is now based at the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.
When he first started, he was so fearful of telling colleagues the truth about his sexuality that he pretended to have a girlfriend.
“I think because I was so young, like, when I knew and then I thought, like, even walking around the high street, ‘oh, I’ve just joined the fire service at 18, oh I’d better have a girlfriend’ because everyone else had wives and everything else,” he explained.
Couch added: “Imagine if I turned up and said ‘Here’s my guy’.”
At the age of 25, he told his family that he was gay – which included posting a letter to his sister to tell her.
It did, however, take him longer to tell colleagues: “I’d like to think that everybody liked me on station – and then to come out and say to everybody that I was gay – I didn’t want them to think any differently of me.”
He eventually “came out to the guys” in 1997 and said he was met with an overwhelmingly positive response.
The emergency services worker stated: “It never changed the way they thought about me or the way we worked together as a team.
“It was a weight off the shoulders definitely after telling them all.”
Couch encouraged those who find themselves in similar positions to his own to come out once they are “ready in themselves”.
He also stated that LGBTQ+ people are more “widely accepted” than when he became a firefighter and told those like him to “embrace the moment and enjoy life for who you are.”
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