When I was growing up there was nothing I wanted more than to be whisked off to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in pursuit of a career as an X-Man. (Well, it was that or Hogwarts.)

For me, the X-Men were the ultimate role models; they were powerful, they fought for good and some of them even had blue skin and scales! It’s only now that I’m older that I realise how influential these heroes were in helping me to come to terms with my sexuality.

My early teen years consisted of relentlessly rewatching the X-Men movies and when that wasn’t enough, I turned to bleaching two white stripes in the front of my hair in an effort to look like the character Rogue. More than just a source of inspiration for questionable hairstyles, the films provided me with the role models I needed as a young LGBTQ+ person.