London - The secret lives of others. Don’t you sometimes wish they would stay secret? Especially when it comes to sex. Always when it comes to sex. Stop it with the sex talk, you sex pests, I feel like screaming!
For I can’t be the only one who is tired of he-celebrities invading their own sex privacy in print, in public, in pursuit of that macho glow of popularity that they must believe their sex-fessions bring.
What other excuse could there be, except to indulge in and promulgate the notion they are all irresistible lust buckets, chick magnets, lady-slaying dudes who are helpless in the face of the awesome firepower of their own loins. Or something like that.
Whatever they may or may not be suggesting, it is our inescapable misfortune that the major sex confessors are not just post-coital, but distressingly post-coy, too.
Tony Blackburn is the latest to admit he had so many notches on his bedpost that at times it must have been, as I previously noted, like sleeping in a nest of toothpicks.
In a Radio Times interview, the 69-year-old admitted to a racy past. The veteran disc jockey said that while he could not top the recent admission of Coronation Street’s Bill Roache (who has slept with more than 1,000 women), he did estimate his own tally at about half of that.
On the current sex-o-meter, that puts him ahead of Nick “The Cleggasmatron” Clegg (30 lucky ladies) and Tiger Woods (120 not out), but lagging behind Rolling Stone Bill Wyman (“thousands”), Julio Iglesias (3,000) and Warren Beatty (a creepily precise 12,775, according to a biographer).
At least Tony’s mea culpa came with this get-out-of-jail-free card. “I was single in the Sixties,” he said. In his 2007 autobiography, he said he loved being the centre of attention during the peak of his career, and who could blame him? Even if he had previously admitted to sleeping with only 250 women.
Ahhh, the value of gold bullion, the improving quality of vintage wines, house prices and Tone’s tally of totty - it is amazing how history and time can magnify and enlarge some things, but not others.
Of course, the Tony Blackburn of today is very far removed from the bell- bottomed, cravat-wearing, Playboy bunny-dating hipster who used to roar around swinging London in his E-type Jag.
These days, Tone drives a Smart car and spends nights in with second wife Debbie - to whom he has never been unfaithful, bless him. He is a vegetarian clean-living, mild-mannered sexagenarian - in the non-carnal sense, if you don’t mind.
Indeed, one of the reasons he won the first I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2002 was his gentlemanly refusal to talk about “naughty” things around the jungle campfire in front of the “ladies”.
So I think his latest confession should be taken in the spirit of fun it was given - though I can’t say the same about some other ghastly sex-fessions that have been swirling around the airwaves this week.
For none other than Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Fonda and Zoe Saldana have been swapping their sex secrets in excruciating detail on a new US TV series called The Conversation.
They didn’t, however, mention some of their all-time favourite positions - including “in front of a camera”, “number one on the best-selling list” and “in the spotlight”.
Sex-fessions might provide a brief bolt of publicity. However, I do wish all celebs would grasp that there are some things in life that should remain a secret between you and your pants. The number of people you’ve slept with is at the top of that list. So, too, is the how, wherefore and practical constraints of the deed. - Daily Mail