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In a crowded field, perhaps the gayest thing about me is that I didn’t spend my teenage gap year pilgrimaging to India or Thailand in search of myself. Instead, I hitch-hiked to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Tennessee. Even at 19, I suspected that the answers to life’s most pressing questions could be found at the feet of the Dolly Lama.

I was right. I completed the last leg of my journey with a florist who was running deliveries up the mountain. One of his customers was a former school friend of Dolly’s, and I took the opportunity to breathlessly enquire whether her classmates had always known that Parton would become a huge star. “We didn’t, but she did,” she drawled. Exquisite.

This shining example of self-belief powered me through my early career in magazine writing, until I struck gold four years later when I was flown to Nashville to interview Dolly about her most recent album. Entering her private rehearsal space, my head was 100% buzzing static and 0% functioning brain. My sense of impostor syndrome was undimmed when Dolly appeared wearing what looked like three stacked wigs and a pair of fishnet cutoff leggings, assumed an incredulous expression and wheezed: “Are you my interviewer? But you’re a baaaby!” before gripping my waist in her hot pink taloned hands.

She proceeded to sing a quarter of her answers, and when I volunteered that I was there on behalf of gay magazine Attitude, she leant forward and whispered conspiratorially, “I could sense that you were gay.” On anyone else’s lips it would’ve been sarcastic (my Christopher Kane galaxy print top and familiarity with her disco era were dead giveaways) but Dolly had an open-hearted sincerity which was impossible to shrink away from. Despite my nerves, being in her company felt as natural as a flower turning towards the sun. It remains one of the most special moments of my life.

In fact, the experience was so overwhelming that I spent the next 24 hours in a kind of fugue state, dispassionately watching the other journalists return to London and failing to question why Dolly’s record company had allotted me an extra day in Nashville. The answer was: they hadn’t. In the confusion of my rapture at having met Dolly, I had missed my flight home by 24 hours. I had zero savings and no idea how I would fund my return, my dream of meeting Dolly having swiftly curdled into a nightmare.

In a heightened state of panic, I explained my predicament to the airport ticket agent, who asked what had brought me to Nashville. “I’ve been with Dolly Parton,” I wailed. She must have either inferred that I was a vulnerable fabulist or a distant relative of Dolly’s. Either way she took pity and booked me on a free flight home. Dolly had saved the day.

The thing is, everyone loved Dolly Parton. Queer people have a tendency to valorise underdogs – but while Dolly came from starkest poverty, she went on to be universally adored. Her Q score (a global ranking of how people view your brand) consistently placed her as one of the least disliked public figures in the world. Her gift lay in uniting everyone from God-fearing country fans to her hordes of LGBTQ+ devotees. One poll showed that she was viewed favourably by roughly 75% of both Democrats and Republicans, an unheard of consensus in these partisan times.

Crucially, Dolly didn’t achieve this by riding the fence. She lived by her core tenet: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose” – incidentally, about the best piece of advice you could give a queer kid, or anyone trying to orient themselves in a hostile world. In an era where many pop stars live or die based on their ability to reinvent, she was consistently, authentically, brilliantly herself.

Clearly, anyone who concedes to having based her look on “the town tramp” is going to be catnip for gays. But her quips carried with them a deeper message: she never assimilated and she never expected other people to either. She was staunch in her defence of LGBTQ+ fans before it was the popular thing to do: as early as 1991 she sang about embracing gay people on her song Family; in 2006 she released Travelin’ Thru, about a transgender woman, and 10 years later opposed the North Carolina “bathroom bill”.

Alongside her legacy as an unparalleled musical force, she will live on as a beacon of kindness, warmth and generosity. I only met Dolly once, but I’ll miss her for ever.