Born in 1947, Jeremy Norman belongs to the first generation of homosexual Englishmen able to express their sexuality openly and without fear of prosecution, courtesy of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. As his entertaining memoir attests, Norman has certainly made the most of his freedom. Not only has his life been ‘a frenzied dance and feast of pleasure’ but, as an astute businessman, he has plundered the pink pound in a succession of enterprises including Heaven, the world’s most famous gay nightclub. And, perhaps most remarkably of all, he has lived to tell the tale.
The 1967 Act did not change the world overnight. In Norman’s view, it took another 20 years for homosexuality to become socially acceptable as well as legal. Norman and his queer friends at Cambridge at the end of the Sixties were only too keen to prove their ‘manly credentials’ by appearing in public at May Balls with eligible girls. A rare exception was the earnest and politicised Nigel de Villiers Hart, later famous for outing his former lover and fellow Cambridge undergraduate Michael ‘Polly’ Portillo. Consequently Norman’s sex life at Cambridge was a veritable desert after Harrow where boy-on-boy action, if not legal, was not only acceptable but abundant.
Norman is no slouch himself when it comes to outing and we see the first evidence of the acuity of his ‘gaydar’ when he was sent post-Harrow to stay in Kenya with his mother’s friend Lady Delamere of White Mischief fame. Norman convincingly argues that Diana Delamere was in a sexual relationship with her permanent house-guest Lady Patricia Fairweather, but his assertion that Diana, one of the best documented man-eaters of the 20th century, was primarily a lesbian is like describing Lester Piggott, who rode a few winners over hurdles, as primarily a jump jockey.
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