It always amuses me that, if you type the name of most male celebrities + ‘gay?’ into Google, you’ll quickly find this question posted again and again, along with fiercely debated discussions about their sexuality and some people claiming to be the authority on the matter.

I don’t see the issue of whether famous people should publicly come out as a black and white one. There are the ones who’ve made it an open secret, obviously out to the people around them, just haven’t confirmed it in the media – we all know some of the names. Then there’s the ones who hide behind a wedding and adopted children.

I’m not sure it’s all to do with fear of rejection by the public, either. I’m sure some canny publicists realise a bit of ambiguity and intrigue never heart any big star – always good to appeal to the widest demographic. Plus, us gays love the whole ‘are they/aren’t they’ cat and mouse game and tend to lose interest in a celeb when they finally confirm what we always suspected. And what you’re basically saying, by coming out, is, “I like gay sex,” which translates to “I like nothing better than a big, hard dick in my arse,” which then gets etched into some people’s brains and that’s all they associate you with.

Us mere mortals aren’t in a position to have a blanket coming out, informing everybody all at once with a singe newspaper headline. For most gays it’s a process that has no end – you’re straight until proven otherwise. A group of people in my life who still don’t know I’m gay because I never came out to them are my old school friends. One of them is getting married in September and I’ve been invited to both the wedding and the stag night (which I believe you call a bachelor party in the US). I used to hang out with these guys all the time and would love to go, but if I do, I’d have to level with them, and that means coming out to bunch of very straight lads.

I genuinely don’t think they’d have a problem with it, but they might treat me differently. I suppose it was a bit cowardly never confiding in any of them, but by the time I was confident in telling people I’m gay, I’d moved away and hardly ever saw them and it was all too easy to avoid the words when I did. In fact, it’s several years since we last all met up and that’s a shame, because we were a tight, little group at school.

Actually, for a bunch of straight guys, there was rather a lot of mutual masturbating and hand jobs, but that’s just normal for an all-boys school, right?