'Growing up gay on my estate was hell. I found a way out no-one expected'

Growing up gay on an estate in Tameside, Nic Lee remembers being relentlessly bullied.

At its worst, he recalls, his head was slammed off a car bonnet in a violent attack. Nic wanted nothing more than to fit in.

So he turned into what he describes as a “bad kid”, stealing money from his mum and take beers from the fridge to prove himself to his peers.

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But there was one passion that allowed him to escape the torment he was suffering - dance. Though he’d loved the hobby from a young age, Nic, now 17, spent lockdown learning how to dance professionally from his box bedroom in Ashton.

After building his skills through a local contemporary dance group, he’s now been offered a spot at a top dance academy in London – becoming one of the youngest people to ever be accepted at the school.

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, the teenager said: “The whole childhood thing was really rough. I didn’t have a sense of direction in anything. The environment I grew up in wasn’t great and growing up was kind of awful.

“The people who lived around me were the type of kids who set garages on fire and things like that. All these people were awful and at some point they all turned on me because I came out as gay. I used to be awfully bullied by all of them.

“Growing up gay was never really easy. I knew I was for so long but when I came out pretty early at the age of like 10 everybody had an opinion and this led to me being bullied every single day by people on the estate.

“They egged my house, hit my head if a car door, physically and verbally abused me, played knock-a-door-run on my house and there were times where called the police and reported it to the