Chris Birch had a stroke and woke up gay (© Jonathan Gurr/Wales News Service)

Show focuses on man who says stroke 'turned me gay'

4/17/2012

Last year, Chris Birch was a 266-pound, beer-chugging rugby player. Now the 27-year-old Welshman is a slender hairdresser who has no recollection of his party-loving past or of why he used to date women. Birch had a stroke after a freak accident and, as he recovered, he realized that his sexual orientation had changed. "I came to the realization that the stroke had turned me gay," he said. After a difficult "lonely" transition, Birch moved out of his house, came to terms with his attraction to men and eventually found peace. "I know who I am now," he said in a new BBC show. "And I prefer who I am now."

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