The book is a way of freeing myself from a particularly dark period he says but freedom does not mean

“The book is a way of freeing myself from a particularly dark period,” he says; but freedom does not mean forgetting “I’m not trying to shed it,” he says “I’m trying to integrate it into my life, to remember it. The book is about returning, remembering, and then moving on.”‘Love Undetectable: reflections on friendship, sex and survival’ is published by Chatto and Windus, price pounds 12.99.IN HIS OWN WORDSOn Aids’The duties demanded in a plague, it turned out, were the duties of friends: the kindness of near strangers, the support that asks the quietest of acknowledgements, the fear that can only be shared with someone stronger than a lover’On gay culture’What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship’On the reaction of the gay community’Anything that raises any internal honesty about gay life is inherently suspect’On America’I'm in love with this country. It’s often easier to come to terms with difficult issues when you’re out of context’On sex and how many partners he’s had’Too many, God knows. Too many for meaning and dignity to be given to every one; too many for love to be present at each; too many for sex to be very often more than a temporary but powerful release from debilitating fear and loneliness’On his book’The book is a way of freeing myself from a particularly dark period.

I’m not trying to shed it, I’m trying to integrate it into my life, to remember it. The book is about returning, remembering and then moving on’. AGED 18, the very first thing I bought from my very first pay packet was a pair of Derek Rose red flannel pyjamas. At pounds 25, they left me little change from the meagre pounds 60 a week wage that couturiers to the Queen Mother, Norman Hartnell, paid me But they were important. For years before this I had had to put up with “girls’” pyjamas, or worse, Italian girl’s pyjamas that consisted of jersey jogging pant style bottoms and a pull-on top with flowers all over it. Whenever I could, usually when my father was away on business, I would satisfy my need for “proper” pyjamas by sleeping in his pyjama tops. The navy satin self-stripe ones (always kept ironed and folded in case of hospital visits) were particularly coveted.

There was never any doubt that pyjamas were the thing to wear to bed. So it was with some confusion that this week I read that Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, is wondering when we (herself included, she confesses to falling for the “cosiness” of pyjamas) all got so “dreary” and started wearing “something”, be it a t-shirt, nightshirt or nightdress to bed. Have we gone dreary? What do we wear to bed?
The first person I rang was Derek Rose of Derek Rose pyjamas, who’s been “in pyjamas” for 45 years What did you wear in bed last night, Derek? I asked. “I wore a ’shortie’ pyjama – it’s what I always wear, a short- sleeved, short-trouser variant of the pyjama.

Last night it was in a yellow cotton batiste with an anchor print on it.”Then I rang Jamie Seaton, designer of Toast, a mail order company that specialises in lovely pyjamas and pyjama-type trousers for lounging round the house (the big thing for the next century) “The truth? Nothing, I never wear anything in bed. I wear pyjamas around the house but take them off to go to bed.” This is actually very common in France where they change into pyjamas when they get home and then get naked for bed.Next, I ask Johnnie Boden of Boden mail order, a man who recognises that pyjama pants are the most comfortable trousers in the world and sells them as “pull-on pants” But last night he wore “nothing. I never wear anything in bed.” PR Consultant Michael Donovan likes the idea of pyjamas but possesses none and slept naked last night. I try two fashion students, surely at the cutting edge of what’s happening and not “dreary”.