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It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.

I was on holiday recently and I came home to find that one of the papers here had 'bikini'd' me on the beach. I was wearing a grossly unflattering costume and they had published photographs of me taken from behind. I looked dreadful. I went into our local newsagent and bought up every copy.

I think I was afraid of what I might say when I got onto someone's stage or in front of someone's camera.

It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.

When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier - as though, after decades in the public eye, they'd suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator.

There were times at the start of it all when I would be standing, terrified, in front of the cameras and people I considered 'real' actors. I had no idea what was happening, what the guy with the clipboard did, or if people in the studio were looking at me because it was their job to look at me or because they thought I was making a mess of things.

The first time I went out under the spotlight, I was proper freaked out.

I thought, If I'm so afraid of a bikini, there's something wrong. And so I had to get back into one!

It was all men, and there I was prancing around in gowns that barely got past the censors.