Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

I’m appalled – and gripped – by nudity

Like Tom Jones and Maureen Lipman, I’m a reluctant voyeur

When I am watching TV with my wife, we’re often torn between a new episode of Location, Location, Location and a rerun of our absolute favourite, Bargain Hunt.

When I am watching TV with my friend Maureen Lipman (and hidden cameras are filming us in the process for Celebrity Gogglebox), it’s a toss-up between Channel 4’s Naked Attraction and Netflix’s latest ratings winner, Sex/Life. Both are utterly appalling and completely gripping.

In a nutshell, Naked Attraction is a dating show where people pick potential partners entirely on the basis of what they look like starkers. And there are a lot of close-ups – so you don’t miss a thing.

For me, the star of Series 5 (Series 6 is already in the making) was Ian – at 75, the programme’s oldest contestant to date; trim, toned and sporting a fine Prince Albert on his todger – or winky, as lovely Lorraine Kelly (a fellow Celebrity Goggleboxer) termed it. Ian is partial to genital jewellery, explaining that, once upon a time, he boasted 17 piercings on his private parts.

‘He’s still got a load of bollocks on his bollocks,’ observed the great Sir Tom Jones, another Goggleboxer, chuckling in disbelief as Ian set out his stall for us.

Ian was for 30 years a happily married man, he told us, and straight. In his widowerhood, however, he wanted to explore his sexuality and was interested to discover in his eighth decade that men seemed to fancy him even more than women did. Ever eager to oblige, the Naked Attraction production team provided the old boy with a choice of male and female potential partners.

To Maureen’s and my (and I think his own) surprise, Ian eventually plumped for one of the women on offer, a wellendowed lady of riper years. He chose her, he confided, not just because he liked the look of her ample breasts but also, and mainly, because, during the show’s unexpected craft section, she had modelled her piece of clay into the shape of a huge heart instead of a huge phallus…

Which brings me to Sex/Life, a bonkbusting global hit for Netflix, a glossy drama about a married woman who loves her husband dearly but lusts after a former lover who has got something to offer that hubby hasn’t.

‘It isn’t acting ability,’ murmured Dame Maureen, ‘so it must be…’

And it was. Only minutes into the episode, the lover dropped his towel to reveal a preposterously pendulous penis that hung right down to his knees.

‘It must be a prosthetic,’ said Maureen, edging closer to the screen, ‘or CGI. Extraordinary what they can do these days.’

Beyond belief.

Late-life randiness may be something Oldie readers want to embrace – or be wary of. In senescence, it can afflict even the greatest.

Rereading Noël Coward’s diaries this month, I came across his account of a memorable lunch in the south of France in the mid-1950s where the guest of honour was Winston Churchill, who had recently retired as Prime Minister but was still an MP and would remain one until 1964.

Coward and Churchill were guests of Emery Reves, Hungarian-born publisher, financier and art collector. Before lunch, they stood admiring a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a girl with a naked bottom.

‘Very appetising!’ exclaimed Churchill appreciatively.

The great statesman, Coward noted, was ‘absolutely obsessed’ with their host’s mistress, Wendy Russell, a former model just turned 40, twice married and by all accounts completely gorgeous. Her former boyfriends included Cary Grant and Errol Flynn.

According to Coward, Churchill ‘followed her around the room with his brimming eyes and wobbled after her across the terrace, staggering like a vast baby of two who is just learning to walk’.

Oh dear. Is this what the future has in store?

‘Are there any good things about getting older?’ I wondered aloud at a friend’s 85th-birthday party the other day.

‘Oh, yes,’ piped up a fellow guest, cheerfully, ‘There is the pleasure of reminiscence.’ Christabel Gairdner’s point was proved when we started chatting and realised that we had first met when she had worked at the London publisher Michael Joseph, back in the 1970s. It was fun talking about the old days – the offices in Bedford Square, the lunches in Charlotte Street and the encounters with authors of all kinds.

Christabel had especially fond memories of Mandy Rice-Davies, incidental star of the Profumo affair and witness at the trial of Stephen Ward. When Michael Joseph published her autobiography, Mandy gave Christabel a lovely present: a bottle of Fendi eau de toilette. When Christabel thanked her for her generosity, Mandy said it was nothing and admitted that she had stolen it from Harrods. Christabel has the bottle to this day, with a little of the perfume still unused.

Gyles’s childhood memoir, Odd Boy Out, will be published by Michael Joseph in September