WHEN Stuart Thomas boarded the subway and realised his fellow passengers were wearing nothing but their birthday suits, a couple of thoughts bombarded his dark brown head.

The first was that these San Franciscans were rather outrageous and show-offy, that it was all a bit of a shock to his Presbyterian Scots sensibility.

“At the time I didn’t know where to look, literally,” says the playwright, television and film writer who grew up in the little Renfrewshire village of Inchinnan, now home for a break.

But the second thought made him smile. Thomas felt glad to have moved to a city in which its citizens could go out in the bare buff if they so wished, for a good cause. (Folsom Street LBGT rights.)

“These people, families, single people, were exposed,” he recalls. “And it made me think about this liberal, open world. But this experience also made me realise that while people in Scotland, at some level, are warm and welcoming, that’s not always the case.”

We’re discussing liberalism and sexuality because Thomas, who had more than fifty writing credits when he moved to the States in 2005 to study film, has written a new play.

Sixty Nine Shades of Gay is a very funny, but often dark monologue starring River City’s Gary Lamont. (Who plays hairdresser Robbie in the BBC soap.)

The play features Aidan, who is rewinding on his relationships via phone pics and social media messages.

But Thomas was keen to explore several themes. “I wanted to get across the idea gay guys aren’t victims,” he maintains. “There is this idea going around gay guys will always be unlucky in love, or a target, or never going to meet anyone. We’re all fed up with that narrative

“I wanted to say something in this piece about people being allowed to do whatever they want, sexually, romantically, socially - and still make it funny.”

He adds; “You see, even though big advances have been made (in tolerance of sexual preference) there are ways to go. There are so many little battles still to be fought.”

The play is partly autobiographical, but in conversation Thomas doesn’t (initially) mention the real darkness he endured as a gay teenager. In fact, he doesn’t reveal the true impact of being gay until a day after our interview.

“I was badly bullied for about two years as a teenager, usually connected to the gay thing,” he says later. “And it was relentless, and often violent.”

He explains why he didn’t talk about his how traumatic his early life was. “I felt that old instinctive discomfort; well, actually, shame. It’s weird that, even at forty seven while talking to you I felt a sense of it (the bullying) being my fault. But if I’m going to talk about this play I need to talk about the experiences that informed it.”

Thomas’s lawyer dad and mum made sure he had a comfortable upbringing, but they were unaware the abuse their teenager suffered. That said, the writer himself didn’t fully grasp the impact of abuse until he left Scotland behind.

“That’s when you realise you had to deal with Section 28 and that level of discrimination,” he recalls. “Imagine what it’s like to grow up with a sense of being different, but not in a good way.”

Stuart Thomas grew up with the idea he’d become a piano player. “I studied piano from an early age and went to Glasgow University to study Music and English. But what would I do with that degree?”

Teach? “Never fancied it,” he shrugs. Thomas became a Piano Man, appearing at the likes of Glasgow nightclub, Victoria’s. “But I hated it,” he says, grinning. “Without fail, every time I played there, someone would ask me to play Pearl’s A Singer.”

In 1987, he progressed to the pizza restaurant circuit, backing old school pal Alyson Orr, an accomplished singer who would go on to form the Swingcats. “That was a tough gig,” he admits, grinning. “The wait staff hated Alyson and me because we got paid a lot more than they did. But I never actually ever finished a shift in profit, because I used to spend my wages on wine as I worked.”

He adds, smiling; “The piano was bad too.”

When Orr decided she fancied acting, Thomas reckoned he’d have a go at writing. His first effort was a comedy version of Salome. “John Linklater in the Herald thought it ‘mental’ but wrote a really encouraging review, which gave me the confidence to continue.”

Thomas and Orr formed Take 2 Theatre company, drawing from the seemingly bottomless funding well that was Mayfest at the time. But the investment paid off. Thomas came up with Salon Janette, (a comedy set in a hairdressing salon) and female audiences took to it like setting lotion on a bubble perm.

“Yet, it nearly didn’t happen because a lovely lady called Janette who ran a salon in Patrick called Salon Janette got wind of the show when we were in rehearsals,” he says, smiling.

“I was so young and naive that it didn’t even occur to me that naming a show after a real-life place might not go down too well with the proprietor, especially when the show was advertised in ads with the line ‘Love... lies... illicit passion... and I only came in to get my roots done...’ But it all ended well, because Janette and her equally nice husband had a sense of humour about the whole thing.”

Thomas went to become a playwright-in-residence at Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre, where he wrote the critically-acclaimed Damn’d Jacobite Bitches. But he needed to move on, out of Scotland and into a world of new career opportunity.

He moved to America to study Film, able to support himself by writing plays and pantos for a UK audience. With the course over he began a new career as a Film Studies lecturer.

Thomas is now married to an Iranian. “He’s a psychologist, so he understands human behaviour,” says the writer, grinning; “But I’ve told him not to analyse me.” Why? Would he point out writing is selfish and insular? “That’s so right,” he laughs. “You are constantly dealing with all these voices in your head and synthesizing all your experiences.”

Thomas has had many different types of voice in his head in recent times. There are the outrageous bawdy voices featured in his Glasgow Pavilion Theatre smash hit The Real Hoosewives of Glesga, there is the film voice in Out Here, the story of a young Middle Eastern boy who comes to Glasgow and believes having sex with men is what you do – even though he isn’t gay. The movie is being released later in the year.

Thomas is also developing one of his stage plays You Don’t Bring Me Flowers into a BBC sitcom. And of course there’s the voice of Aiden, his 69 Shades character. Who is partly Stuart Thomas, of course.

“I didn’t set the play in Inchinnan,” he says, grinning, “because no one would have heard of it, so I set in in Renfrew. Aiden describes Renfrew as ‘The place where the planes dump their sh*** before landing at Glasgow Airport.’”

His voice back shifts to a more serious note. “I love writing but when I began to write this play I didn’t realise part of the process was me working out what was going on in my head. For years, I had been absorbing stuff without really realising it. It’s only when you go somewhere that’s a lot more tolerant you realise you’ve been holding onto things that aren’t necessarily true.”

The writer believes he has learned more about his own character from writing this play. “Yesterday, I watched Gary in rehearsals for the first time and I was quite affected by it.”

He thinks for a moment and produces a wry smile. “I know there are a bunch of people coming from my school to see the play. And I wonder if some of those who appear are people who bullied me?”

* Sixty Nine Shades of Gay, Oran Mor Glasgow, February 8-18.