Dawn Airey

Dawn was interviewed for the January 2024 edition of Diva Magazine:

 

““In my early teens, I was attracted to slightly androgynous looking females. I didn’t give it a label. I didn’t think about doing anything about it. But it was there.”

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As she grew older and more confident in herself, her attraction for women became harder to ignore. “Also,” grins Dawn, “women were hitting on me quite a lot. It was hugely exciting, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”

 

…At 40 years old she was experiencing a sapphic awakening. “I thought, ‘What was I missing all these years?’ It just felt right.” Then she got together with lesbian telly trailblazer and activist Jacquie Lawrence…

 

They started a relationship. “The rumour mill was really swirling. My boss at the time said, ‘Oh, I hear you’re a dyke.’” The papers were sniffing around too. Photographers hid in a white van outside their home, waiting to snag pictures of them together. In 2002 Dawn got wind that the Mail On Sunday was planning to out them as a couple and her as a lesbian in a gratuitous front page splash: “Sky boss with lesbian lover”, Jacquie cast as “the filth-peddler of Channel Four”. Dawn wasn’t yet out to her parents and had to tell them before the national press beat her to it. She wrote them both letters. As soon as her dad read his, he rang her up. “He said, ‘I love you. You love a woman. When can I meet her?”

 

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In February 2007 Dawn and Jacquie entered a civil partnership. A month later their first daughter was born. One day Dawn was walking out of the tube at Warren Street station, when she noticed a stack of Evening Standards. The poster on the side of the dispenser declared: “TV boss has child with lesbian lover.” “I thought, ‘I wonder who that is.’ So I got the Standard and saw: ‘Fuck, it’s us!”

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The press were coming after them once again. The Mail had cameras poised over the hospital where Jacquie gave birth to Dulcie, forcing them to leave via the back entrance. “That really did step over a line. I went to see the managing director of the Daily Mail. I said, ‘Look, I have a child. Back off.’ And to be fair, they did. But it was a right old rollercoaster and not pleasant at all.”

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Today Dawn and Jacquie are happily married with two daughters. Dawn’s career has continued on its dizzying trajectory… She’s mentored queer women, engaged with LGBTQIA networks and participated in many queer events, panels, forums and juries. While she is heartened so see the “huge strides made” in representation, she points out, “A big challenge now is how do you extend that inclusivity to our trans colleagues? Diversity is never done.””