Well-remunerated dinosaur John Humphrys conducted a ludicrous interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning with the British actor Rupert Everett – totally unnecessarily grilling him about his sexuality.
The actor, who has been openly gay for decades (ie this is NOT news, and wouldn’t be even if it happened yesterday), graciously answered the presenter’s increasingly irrelevant questions – which included asking if he “regretted” coming out.
In a bizarre question that came out of the blue, Humphrys asked:
“You came out as gay, what, nearly 30 years ago – do you ever regret that? Or was it the right timing? What effect has it had on you? On your career, I mean?”
“I don’t regret it, it wasn’t really a choice for me,” was Everett’s polite reply, before saying that, “to be gay in a heterosexual business, a boys’ club, is certainly not ideal”.
You can say that again, Rupes, especially about this morning’s instalment of the Today programme, on which it appeared the existence of homosexuality was the issue of the day – with Humphrys asking Everett’s views on all things gay, from being inspired by Oscar Wilde to what he thought about gay parenting.
“I think things are changing,” Everett valiantly suggested in one of his answers.
You’d think.
For all this led to Humphrys’ final question, delivered without a hint of irony:
“Do you think they’ll ever get to the stage where we’ll do an interview like this and it won’t even be mentioned that you happen to be gay? In other words, it’ll be irrelevant?”
Hmm, maybe we all got to that stage quite a long time ago, John?