the man who made queer as folk is 63 and his boyfriend is 27. he said it before you could: "ridiculous, i know."

via How To Fail with Elizabeth Day and PinkNews

Russell T Davies, the man who gave us Queer as Folk, It's a Sin and a Doctor Who revival, would like to get ahead of your group chat.

"A lot younger. He's 27, which is ridiculous. I know," he told Elizabeth Day about his boyfriend on the latest episode of her How To Fail podcast, which went up on Sept. 30. Davies said on the show that he is 63. The boyfriend is Australian, and Davies has a theory about that: "They know what's what. It's like he might as well be 40."

"He's just wonderful and it's a great lease of life in my life," he added. "He's just gorgeous." The two of them then tried to work out whether 27 makes him Gen Alpha or Gen Z, and landed, with visible relief, on Gen Z.

The detail that actually sells it is television. The boyfriend, Davies said, "never watches TV. It's all clips and streaming with him," so Davies sat him down in front of ITV's afternoon quizzes, Tipping Point and then The Chase. "By the end, he was completely sold." A man who wrote a whole career out of loving telly has found someone to indoctrinate. Good for them both.

The same conversation was mostly about grief. Davies' husband, Andrew, died eight years ago this month, and he said there is a lot about Andrew in his new book. Asked whether he talks about Andrew with his boyfriend, he said "all the time," and that "my lovely boyfriend Oliver is completely respectful" when Davies sits him down for The Chase and talks about how much Andrew loved it, as PinkNews also reports.

His one piece of advice on loss was not advice at all. "There isn't a magic solution other than the fact that you need to earn a wage. You need to have your tea." Which is the most British sentence ever spoken, and also correct.