Ellen DeGeneres discusses ‘cruel’ coming out phase

TV host Ellen DeGeneres hit rock bottom after she was made fun of for coming out as a lesbian.

The 58-year-old talk show host was the “punch line of a lot of cruel jokes” when she came out but is feeling more positive about life now.

“I was the punch line of lots of jokes. I laughed at some, but I realised there’s somebody on the other side of them. It’s cruel. I’ve never liked mean comedy, but that became even more important to me after I was the brunt of it,” DeGeneres told OUT magazine.

“If this isn’t an example of ‘it gets better’, I don’t know what is. Time is a strange thing. I was at rock bottom and out of money, with no work in sight, but one step at a time, it gets better. It gets much better than better,” she added.

DeGeneres came out as a lesbian in an interview with Time magazine in 1997.