It always seems a little odd when celebrities in their 50s come out as non-binary – David Walliams being the most recent example –  but nevertheless, Coronation Street icon Shoba Gulati has now announced her newly-realised identity with the world at the age of 58.

Gulati told the How To Be 60 podcast the other day:

“I’ve become more happy describing myself as a person. What do people call it now… non-binary. So, I suppose that’s who I am.

“I’ve never had a word for it, but I’ve learnt from our younger generation what that might look like in terms of a word, because I know what it feels like in terms of being me.”

Interestingly, Gulati is happy to use both she/her and they/them pronouns, so cheers for making things a little easier on us, I suppose. She says her family have always understood and accepted that she is both “extremely feminine or extremely masculine”.

“All the way through my life I’ve never had the words for that and I’ve never managed to explain that and I suppose my immediate family have not really thought about it.

“They’ve just thought: ‘Shobna is either extremely feminine or extremely masculine.’ Because I was just accepted as a person who fell out of the tree and equally the person who put on all this make-up and did a dance.”

Gulati says she realised she was non-binary when she met a sound engineer on a show who described themselves as non-binary:

“The sound person said to me that they were non-binary and I said, ‘What is that?’ So, then they explained and I thought – ‘Well, I feel like that, but I didn’t ever have that vocabulary.’

“They said that they saw themselves as a person and that the gender – the he or the she – wasn’t important to who they are. And I thought, ‘That’s all I’ve ever thought.’

“I think now I’m free to say it out loud. I think people around me have accepted who I am for a long time without any explanation, but I suppose when I’m asked now, I’ll say it.”

Just think, if Shobna Gulati had never met that sound engineer, she’d still be going around referring to herself as a woman, probably till the end of her days. Which might not seem like a big deal to you or me, but different strokes for different folks, as they say.

What I’m still a bit confused about is how Gulati uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, despite basing her non-binary status on the fact she’s always been either ‘extremely feminine or extremely masculine’. In which case, wouldn’t he/him also be appropriate? I don’t know, and I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. If Shobna Gulati is happy with her new identity, then more power to her. Go Shobna Go! Go Shobna Go!

For the time non-binary actress Emma D’Arcy said “I really like playing women, I’m really good at it,” click HERE.