I was 12, she was 13

According to a survey reported last weekend in the Independent on Sunday, almost all homosexuals are barking mad. I am using the politically correct term ‘barking mad’ so as not to incur the wrath of the mental-health pressure groups, all of which become psychotically incensed and even violent when they read of mad people being described as ‘nutters’ or ‘doolally’ or – an old favourite of mine purloined from the US demotic – ‘crazier than a shithouse rat’. So I’ll stick to ‘barking mad’ and thus forestall angry letters from Mind, et al.

In this survey, two thirds of more than 2,000 gays and lesbians admitted to suffering from mental-health problems, roughly double the rate of lunacy among those people who prefer to immerse themselves in the bodily fluids of partners of the opposite sex.

I don’t know what this proves, exactly. When I lived in Camberwell, a few hundred yards away from the Maudsley asylum, I regularly saw vast legions of the deranged wandering the streets, punching trees, howling at the traffic and gibbering incomprehensibly to themselves. During the infamous Care in the Community scheme, when these people were suddenly let loose en masse, Camberwell became a giant madhouse, a sort of dry-dock Narrenschiff. One mental-health pressure group successfully prevented Cadbury’s from installing a huge advertisement directly opposite the front entrance to the Maudsley, where the seriously disturbed and wacko would arrive for their chemical dosages, their electric shocks and their psychoanalysis. The ad they objected to said, in huge letters: ‘Everyone’s a fruit and nut case.’ It was the first and only instance of an ad being withdrawn for telling the truth.