High life | 11 December 2010

This is in praise of younger men. An outrage is about to take place at Preston Crown Court, where on 7 January 2011, a beautiful 27-year-old ballet teacher, Sarah Pirie, will be sentenced for ‘abducting a 15-year-old’, who was not named (unlucky chappie) for obvious reasons. In my not so humble opinion, this is dead wrong. And if the ballet teacher is sent to prison, it will be the cruellest decision since the Athenians sent poor old Socrates down for corrupting the young.

Mind you, the Brits have always been undersexed, underfinanced and, most of the time, under the table with drink, but this is ridiculous. Because is there a greater gift a 27-year-old beauty can bestow on a 15-year-old boy than sex? Not the other way round, mind you. A 27-year-old man should not have sex with a 15-year-old girl, although in our promiscuous times finding a 15-year-old innocent is like winning the lottery. No, a girl has to be of age, but certainly not a boy. The greatest rite of passage takes place between the sheets when an older woman takes a young man to bed.

Take my case, for example. It was September 1952 and I was returning to America with my parents on the SS Constitution, a great liner, sister ship to SS Independence. We boarded in Cannes with the next stop New York harbour. On board was a famous Norwegian female ship-owner known as Oilboat Olga. She and my father knew each other and we shared a table in the first-class dining-room. Oilboat Olga was travelling with her daughter, a 24-year-old blonde beauty who was obviously bored, and in her boredom took a shine to me. We ended up in the sack. I had turned 15 the previous month. Needless to say, I couldn’t believe my luck, so much so that I stayed in my cabin throughout the trip until my mother had had enough and mentioned the fact to Oilboat Olga, within reason, that is.