the xx, the x factor and exciting times at the World Travel Market

I’m aware I’ve not written a blog in a while and in cyberspace that means I’m, like, dead. But I’ve been enjoying life in the real world instead and to prove it here’s a quick round-up of my current obsessions and observations.

Thanks to Interview Magazine for the pic. Cropped by me down to three.

1. The xx
Like a pushy mum at Billy Elliott auditions, standing on the sidelines screaming ‘Big Smile! Big Smile’ as my kid tap dances to Footloose in floods of tears, I am so crazy proud of my little cousin Romy and her band the xx, I am officially embarrassing.

I do draw the line at asking the moody, minimal threesome (Ollie, Romy and Jamie) to crack a grin at gigs however, as their shoe-gazing style seems to have wowed bloggers, music reviewers and even Courtney Love, who professed her love on their Myspace page.

me & Romy (the xx) before I taught her how to be cool

Romy and I spent our formative teenage years sharing a bedroom so although I’m not saying I taught her EVERYTHING she knows… ok, yes I am.

If you haven’t heard the band, which is impossible if you know me as I have been force-feeding my friends their tracks for years – listen to this (the xx Crystallized) and this (the xx Basic Space) and this (the xx cover Florence and the Machine You’ve Got The Love)

Me totally upstaging Jools and Gladys...Shaika was infront of me, the xx to the left

I’m trying to reign in my over-zealousness in the fear that I am vicariously living out my dreams of stardom through Romy at the expense of my own life (when she told me about hanging with Scarlett Johannssen I think I actually believed I was there). I’m also worried she’s beginning to think I am stalking the band (bagging a much-coveted spot on Jools Holland when the xx played the show was as MAD FAN as I’ve been and in my defense I was more there for Shakira who quite literally shook her She Wolf in my face (look). BEST. NIGHT. EVER.

The xx are touring at the moment, Europe then all around the US and while I miss Romy and getting to sashay past lines of eager ticket-holders at their London gigs, while discovering exactly how unglamorous ‘backstage’ can be, I am excited for the amazing adventure they’re having on the road and am dutifully printing out all their reviews and pritsticking them into my special little folder. See, embarrassing. Officially.
www.thexx.info or www.myspace.com/the xx

Work it Chezza!

2. Cherly Cole’s X Factor Outfits
Like the rest of the nation I have a massive girl crush on Miss Cole, but this season’s X Factor has seen me less lusting after her flawless skin and ‘Because We’re Worth It’ hair and more staring in morbid fascination at her horribly FABOOSH outfits.

The slashed up soldier suit she wore for Fight For this Love was bananas and girlfriend sat there in it for the entire second half of the show – at least she took that hat off.

And the other week I died, in a Rachel Zoe sense, at the site of that quite simply bonkers ensemble by David Koma (above). She shut it down. (If you have no idea what I’m on about watch THIS Rachel Zoe piss-take (my other obsession du jour) )

Gays love a good turn-down service. This is at the Gran Melia Seville

3. Me, travel, the gays
Move over the xx, there’s a new star in town and it’s me, at the World Travel Market. Some crazy has decided to put me on a panel to talk to an entire room of people about travel and gays. If this is anything like my last public speaking outing where I managed to declare my love of ‘a big ribbed bottle’ on Irish radio (long story, but it was an interview about this piece I wrote for the guardian) it will be a blast. But I do genuinely have some thoughts on the subject and they are these:

When people talk about ‘gay travel’ you’d be forgiven for thinking we took road trips on Pride floats, camped in rainbow-coloured tents and boycotted culture, scenery and local life to run straight to the nearest gay bar screeching ‘we’re here, we’re queer, now pour us a beer!’

But as every homo nomad knows, travel is about discovering something new and enjoying the otherness of elsewhere. If there happens to be a gay scene where we land then great, but if we’re on safari in South Africa, dune-bashing in the Dubai desert or shopping in Tokyo, then searching out a scene is probably the last thing on our minds.

Ok, ok you just got back from a lesbian cruise, or a week in West Hollywood – there is, of course, a time and a place for a ‘gaycation’. But show me someone who has only ever travelled on a boat full of bikini-clad women, or seen a city through a haze of muscle Marys and I’ll eat my boarding pass.

Gay travellers are as diverse as any other group and while some could be content to not see another homo for a whole trip, others may enjoy a Mojito or two in boy bar, or have gone specifically to experience a lifestyle they don’t have access to at home.

It’s about options – knowing what, if anything, a destination has to offer the gay community alongside everything else, so we can make informed choices about what to see, do or avoid.

If you are at the WTM and fancy a laugh come to the Out Now seminar next Wednesday
Click here to find out more

I’m not sure quite what this desultory list of mental meanderings really proves, but at least cyberspace knows I’m alive, kicking and nodding my head along to the xx album in a totally embarrassing mum kinda way.

Countryside terrifies me

 

Why are the flowers staring at me?

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m addicted to London. Most days you’ll find me hunched over a mirror snorting its smoke, sleaze and sordid glamour through a rolled-up Harvey Nichols receipt. Hit after hit, I can’t get enough of the city’s intoxicating pleasures. But recently I’ve felt that a lifetime of London has taken its toll. When my best friend Joe found me cowering in the corner of a hotel bar, rocking back and forth and reciting the stations on the circle line like a crazy person, he bundled me into the back of his Jeep and drove us straight to his family’s cottage in Wales.

 

Countryside terrifies me, I don’t like the silence or the darkness or the animals or the long blades of grass that tickle my ankles and make me scream like a girl. There’s nowhere you can get a good Martini and the closest thing to a lesbian bar is the local rambling club. God help me! How long was Joe going to keep me in this pastoral nightmare?

“Relax darling – we’re just here for the weekend. Think of it as The Priory, only without the celebs”.

We made a log fire, played Scrabble and drank a lot of red wine. I was actually starting to relax. Then, before stumbling up the creaky stairs to bed, Joe took great pleasure in telling me how the ghosts of his great lesbian aunts haunted the cottage and on windy nights, you could still hear them squabbling. Maybe it was the Shiraz, or the fact that my London come-down was making me more than usually paranoid, but lying in that cold single bed, I was convinced old Iris and Irene were leaning over me, stroking my hair with their icy hands. By morning I was a gibbering wreck.

We were to spend Sunday going on ‘a walk’ – an obligatory but utterly pointless countryside activity. I’ve no problem walking the length of Sloane Street to get somewhere, but going nowhere, for no reason, with no shops to look at along the way…why bother? Because I refused to walk without a purpose, Joe proposed that we go to a quaint little gay pub he knew.

What he forgot to mention was that my red velour tracksuit was a potentially life-threatening choice of outfit for the occasion. As I scrambled over a fence into a field, a massive bull took one look at me and prepared to charge. “Whatever you do, don’t run” said Joe, before making a dash across the field screaming “I’ve got a date on Monday – I’m saving myself!” Meanwhile I stripped to my underwear and tip-toed between cowpats, finally making it to the other side in one piece.

By the time we arrived at The Queen’s Arms I was in desperate need of a drink. The pub was occupied by three Barbour-wearing butches, who stared at us as though aliens had landed. “Two mojitos please”. Joe stamped on my foot, “She means two pints”.

“Pints of what?” The old queen behind the bar asked with a sneer. “Err..beer”. Joe, for all his country jaunts, was as much of a cocktail-drinking townie as me. We held our pint glasses with two hands and took delicate sips, listening to the clientele grumbling about the tall mixed-race boy and the strange girl in a red tracksuit – “probably immigrants”, “probably straights”.

It was then I realised that despite my run-in with lesbian ghosts, a raging bull and bigoted locals – I’d faced my fear of venturing further than zone 3 and survived. “Joe, thanks for the ‘intervention’ and all, but my God am I ready to OD on the city again…Take me home!”

Fashion!

 

Me, romy & Billie @ Palais de Tokyo

I am writing this atop a ‘floating’ bed in the most brilliantly bizarre hotel suite I’ve ever found myself in. I’m in Paris for a whistle-stop shopping trip with my trés chic cousins Billie and Romy. The One suite belongs to the Five Hotel (onebythefive.com) and is high on wow-factor, low on boring practicalities. We are given a fridge full of ingredients to make an ‘elixir of love’, there is a TV screen in the bath, a bedroom that makes you feel you are flying, and a webcam above the bed so that amorous guests can watch themselves romping in night-vision on an enormous plasma screen TV. But try washing your face in a flat sink, finding somewhere to hang a towel, or actually getting the highly complicated entertainment system to work and, well, there’s an Ibis across the street.

 

In France’s capital of style, form and function part ways the moment a designer suggests fixing a bed so high off the ground you need at least two other people to help you on to it. But that’s fashion, right? If practicality mattered more than fabulousness, we’d all just wear anoraks and sensible shoes whatever the occasion. And yes, that is a bad thing.

What The One lacks in common sense it makes up for in spine-tingling aesthetics. Our suite doesn’t need a designated dancing area, just as I don’t need the Preen jacket I bought in La Marais today, but having them sure does make me happy. I’ve heard many a Vegetarian Shoes-wearing lesbian claiming to be anti-fashion, but to me that just means they’re anti-fun, and anti-art. It’s ok to be unfashionable – not everyone gets to buy their Autumn/Winter wardrobe in Paris – but to be ‘against’ fashion, well I call that ignorance.

I may be coming at this from a slightly prejudiced perspective. I grew-up a stone’s throw from London’s Kings Road in a very fashion-conscious family. Our mums actually encouraged my two cousins and I to wear clothes that made us stand out, and develop our own individual sense of style as soon as we could. Billie, the oldest, is now a make-up artist and because she hangs out with designers du jour Henry Holland and Jonathan Kelsey, looking glamorous is a given. As the only straight girl among us, we leave it to Billie to carry off the Marc Jacobs stilettos – although during last night’s trip to Kong (a wonderful restaurant above Kenzo on Rue du Pont Nuef) we actually end up carrying her in them.

While Romy and I probably both look like we like girls, our style couldn’t be more different. She goes for the East London goth-meets-ghetto look (with a post-punk hair cut) and I’m a bit preppy, a bit profesh and occasionally glam in a vaguely androgynous kinda way. Romy is 19 and in a band, I’m 26 and in a book club, but my point is there are myriad ways to look gay – if you want to – without renouncing fashion. In fact (thanks Agyness) dressing a bit lez has never been more on trend.

So, to those of you reading this thinking I sound like an offensively pretentious fashionista, you’re right – I am. But I love clothes, I love shopping, I love getting outfits spectacularly wrong and sometimes, spectacularly right. And if you can’t understand the thrill of buying something just because it’s beautiful, I urge you to spend a night at The Five Hotel’s One Suite in gloriously frivolous gay Paris. If you’re still anti-fashion, I’ll eat my new Joseph beret.

High Heel Hell

SJP makes it look easy

“No pain, no gain”. “No pain, no gain”. I am hissing this mantra through clenched teeth as I totter precariously across Covent Garden piazza. It’s my first full day wearing high hells, and I’m in absolute, unbearable agony.

It was when I worked on Shoo magazine, where page after glossy page glistened with the latest Louboutins, Manolos and Jimmy Choos, that I resolved to master the art of walking in heels. Four years after leaving the magazine and I have only now bought my first pair.

Why, when I had cupboards full of free designer shoes available to me, and a whole team of women willing to help as I took my first tentative steps in them, did I wait so long before ‘going high’?

I guess the honest answer is, I was scared. I’d never had heels higher than the Clarks I wore at primary school. As a teenager, while my friends were practising walking around their bedroom in cheap Shelly’s stilettos, I was busy trying to look up their skirts.

Shoo’s editor, the diminutive doyenne of footwear, Robina Dam, tried her hardest to encourage me: “Start off with some flats”, she suggested. “Then work-up to kitten heels. They don’t have to be vertiginous, just not trainers Lotte, anything but trainers”.

Like all trendy gay girls, trainers were a wardrobe staple. Not just any trainers mind you – I scoured New York for the coolest, limited edition Nikes and had enough different colour-ways to match every possible outfit. Were my house on fire, I would have sacrificed family photos and priceless heirlooms to rescue my collection.

The nagging problem with all this was, it was nigh on impossible to look super sexy in sneakers. It was a fact; girls looked hot in high shoes. I watched them swap their daytime flats for fierce stilettos come nightfall, and suddenly they were all elegance, long legs and kick-ass attitude. I wanted a piece of that for myself.

But alas, my fear of looking like Bambi on ice, of tripping, or wobbling or panicking at the sight of uneven pavements – kept me resolutely stuck in my Air Stabs. Until that is, last week when a sudden surge of femininity saw me marching into Dune (sorry Robina) and buying the first pair of decent-looking ankle boots with a manageable heel, I could find.

And now I’m crying. I’m actually crying. Because it’s only lunchtime and already I feel as though I’ve walked a thousand miles in shoes made of nails. Sure, they look good – I feel taller and thinner and a hell of a lot more sophisticated than usual but my god… the pain.

I don’t know what sadistic impulse made me think that on my first ever attempt at getting though a day in heels, I wouldn’t need a pair of back-up pumps hidden in my handbag. It was Robina’s first rule. But no, I clip-clopped through the labyrinthine tunnels at Elephant and Castle, up and down the stairs of the Barkerloo line, along the length of the Strand and now across Covent Garden’s cobbles, that may as well have been hot coals for the agony they were causing.

I’m all for suffering for beauty. Waxing, plucking, threading, cupping, back cracking – I do it all in the name of looking and feeling better. But this was one agonising step too far.

However, now I’m pushing 30, I’m determined to break through the pain barrier and learn how to be comfortable in high heels – there’s nothing more tragic than an old person wearing too cool trainers (see Nicky Haslam) so I don’t really have a choice.

Can you help? I need tips from girls (or boys) who don’t think twice about donning a pair of towering heels. What am I doing wrong? Can anything elevate my suffering? I’m determined to improve in time to be drunk, dancing and still vertical at my office Xmas party.

Foreign people hate me

me with Lisu dancers in Chiang Mai. Asking if they did requests did not go down well

I’m all for embracing other cultures and traditions. One of the most important things my state school education taught me (along with how to render someone unconscious with a copy of The Sun newspaper) was what it meant to be a part of a truly multicultural community. Some of my best friends were from the likes of Vietnam, Nicaragua, India and Africa. We were like a walking Benetton advert – sharing the very different lives that had somehow converged at Elliott School, in the middle of a south London council estate.

And yet, 10 years after swapping grim school days for the glamorous media world, and most of those old BFFs for some richer and better-dressed friends, my international relations have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

Yes, now I’m a travel editor I’ve somehow managed to lose friends and alienate people everywhere from Harare to the Hollywood Hills. Even here in London, my run-ins with non-British people leave me wondering if I’m a xenophobe stuck in the body of a liberal. I want to befriend foreigners, believe me I do, but somehow I habitually manage to upset, offend or generally baffle them.

Take, for instance, a recent press trip I went on to Zurich. Me and the other homo hacks that had been shipped to the Swiss capital in the name of EuroPride, were having a gay old time at a lavish dinner put on for us by a hotel. Until that is, our waitress took my coffee order – a ‘single shot’ latte.

“I cannot do that”, she deadpanned with characteristic Swiss neutrality. I laughed nervously, and looked around the table where suddenly everyone had stopped talking and was staring intently at the unfolding vignette.

“Ok. May I ask why?”

Polite – right? A perfectly friendly and normal question?” Apparently not. The waitress regarded me with utter, unguarded distain, then, in perfect English replied:

“It is a machine. I press a button. The coffee comes out. I cannot control how much coffee comes out. It is AUTOMATIC.”

My colleagues were beginning to look uncomfortable, as it became clear I was not about to let this go.

“Can you not just move the cup?”

“What?”

“You know. Move the cup before all the coffee goes in?”

“That is impossible…”

Were it not for the embarrassed silence that surrounded me, I would have continued. Instead, I ordered tea, and felt once again like I had committed a cultural faux pas akin to dry-humping a girl on a Dubai beach.

Then there was the time I made a Thai butler cry. I was reviewing this fantastic luxury resort on Koh Samui and this lovely chap called Pon was tasked with catering to my every whim.

I felt bad asking for stuff, so he mainly just drove me around in a golf buggy and I tried to get him chatting about his life on the island. The conversation came round to the monarchy and I said something along the lines of: “I mean, what exactly does the king do? Isn’t it a bit pathetic how everyone wears yellow because it represents the day he was born?”

Pon looked at me with tears in his eyes, as he slowly unbuttoned his tunic, to reveal a hideous yellow T Shirt.

“I love my king”, said Pon. “All Thailand love our king. It is no good to say mean things about him”.

And that was basically that. An entire nation offended, by one, not unusually, flippant remark.

I won’t bore you with the story of how I was chucked out of an LA lesbian bar for asking this massive butch woman in a bandana to quit dancing all up in my face. Not the done thing in WeHo it emerged…

…Or the trouble I found myself in when trying to explain why I was a vegetarian to staff at a bistro in Provence…

…And don’t get me started about the amount of times I have shouted down the phone at our friends in India when trying to find out why my internet server has stopped working. I wonder if the fact that I called helpful young phone operator Nikhil a “cunting automaton with shitfobrains” will appear on my record next time I try to enter the country.

Maybe I am getting a little less culturally sensitive in my old age. But at least, if my accidental disrespecting of diversity continues, I know how to protect myself with nothing more than a rolled up tabloid.

Watch your back Japan – I’m heading your way next.

Peaches Fuckoff

Peaches Geldof (centre)

During every night out clubbing there comes a point when it is clearly time to leave. Unless, of course, it has slowly dawned on you that the music’s stopped, the lights are on and you’re being escorted off the premises by bouncers who leave you stranded, blinking and gurning, in the middle of a Sunday morning.

Recently, I’ve taken to making abrupt exits from clubs well before last orders. In fact, I’ve barely been there an hour, before I’m struck by an overwhelming desire to get the hell out.

And no, it’s not (totally) because I’d rather be curled up in bed drinking whisky and watching Mad Men. It’s because the people who now frequent London’s trendy gay scene make me feel like shaking them violently while screaming: “you’re at sixth form college – how cool can you seriously be?!”

Over the ten years I’ve been out and about on the London scene, I’ve witnessed small but significant changes that have culminated in a mass exodus from Old Compton Street to Curtain Road. Moving ‘east’ like this seems to be an inevitable trajectory for every generation’s bright young things. The Beats took it one step further, heading so far east they hit Buddhism, but generally the east side is where it’s at everywhere from Manhattan to Berlin.

This recent geographic upheaval has coincided with the London gay scene opening itself up to a new cast of characters. While Soho’s bars unambiguously declare themselves ‘G.A.Y’, the Shoreditch equivalent are welcoming the area’s art school drop-outs, mediyah types, It-girls and A-listers along with the usual LGB crowd.

No longer dark, arty and queer, East London’s gay scene is now as monstrously mainstreamed as Soho. And not that it would ever admit it, but as long as you’re wearing the right clothes – it’s for anyone who wants to feel they’re a little bit different.

And it’s these kinds of kids that I really can’t stand – the bratish spawn of Peaches Geldolf, who clutter up what could be a cool, subversive scene with their “I’m bi-curious, honest” heterosexuality and American Apparel ‘quirkiness’.

So yes, I’ve been going out and going home early for a while now. Most recently, it was due to a girl dressed as a sad clown. She took offence when I asked if she was available for my nephew’s birthday party: “This…”, she gestured grandly at her ridiculous outfit, “…is Jean Paul Gaultier…” Then pointing to her painted face declared: “And this is the work of a St Martin’s graduate who is going to be, like, the next-big-thing.”

Jodie with Scottee, also workin

“Look darling”, I said, “if you’re going to dress as a clown, you really need to do something about that sense of humour”, and with that I departed – bumping into Jodie Harsh (quelle surprise) on the way out.

I knew Jodie when he, ‘Jay’, was a jobbing journalist reviewing clubs for Attitude. We’d spent a fateful night in Birmingham together for a story once, and Jay had drunkenly hooked up with a Brummie bit of trash. It was embarrassing to say the least and Jay’s drag queen alter ego has understandably tried to keep out of my way ever since.

I think Jodie Harsh’s meteoric rise to fame represents all that is wrong with the East London gay scene. It’s over-dressed, obsessed with celebrity and apparently, ignoring me!

Small talk and scientology

"Please leave me alone": Anna Wintour has the right idea when it comes to party chit-chat.

“And that’s exactly what I’m talking about…”, said the American, as it dawned on me that what I thought had been friendly chit chat between strangers at a press launch, was merely a prelude to the main conversational event. He had let me whiter on about work, nodding and yep yepping throughout, while all the time waiting for the perfect opportunity to launch into a much-rehearsed monologue. What followed was the world according to Chuck Smith – LA-based celebrity reporter and, who knew? A scientologist.

For five minutes I feigned interest, and according to the first rule of Good Conversation, tried asking a few questions: “So hang on just a second Chuck,” I ventured, “you’re saying that we humans…”
“thetans, we ‘thetans’…”
“Whatever. We lived among aliens before becoming trapped in bodies on Earth – err, how did that work?”

He listened, with eyes squinting in mock concentration, before just carrying on exactly where he left off, not answering my question or offering any form of explanation for the evolution-shattering bombshell he’d just dropped.

So I stopped bothering, and instead focused on the giant flake of pastry that had got stuck in his stubble when he stopped ranting for long enough to shove a mini sausage roll into his mouth. Ten minutes, 12, 15… this was getting ridiculous – Chuck just couldn’t or wouldn’t stop talking at me.

This happens to me a lot at parties. Despite some past faux pas (see my run-in with Cilla below), I’m so worried about offending people in social situations that I’m regularly cornered by the most boring pontificators in a room. And what could have been a fun night out making friends and influencing people, often just turns into an unbearable endurance test.

So, instead of taking Chuck’s claim that Tom Cruise was the Jesus of our generation as a cue to politely inform him I had to use the ladies’/ get a drink / stab my eyes out with cocktail sticks, I stood there, mute and frozen to the spot, for the entire evening.

Meanwhile I watched as some of my favourite minor celebs sashayed around the Soho Hotel suite, laughing, gossiping and having a blast. They’d all left by the time Chuck looked at his watch and announced he was late for his next appointment, finally freeing me from the clutches of his maniacal ramblings.

There really is an art to small talk. Being able to do it is one thing – I’ll happily chat about partners, kids, the crap weather, the crap economy, The X Factor – but being able to get out of it is quite another.

I seem unable to avoid listening to losers talk me to death at parties, partly because I’m worried about offending someone who could be my next big break, and partly because I hate being rubber-necked myself.

You know the feeling. The person you’re ‘mingling’ with spots someone more important/interesting/better looking over your shoulder and makes a lame excuse to abandon you before you’ve even got to the punch-line.

It’s humiliating. Or it can be, unless you’re a professional mediyah mingler for whom working a room is an elaborate chess game and such a slight is just the move before your checkmate.

Within seconds of entering an event, mediyah minglers have clocked the three most important people to talk to. They move in, compliment their hair, ask them about their job, tell a funny story and leave them laughing and fawning over how fabulous they are. Then they move on to the fittest people in the room, repeating steps one to three ad nauseam.

It’s a failsafe strategy. I’ve seen it work countless times. But until I can afford to risk mistaking Rupert Murdoch for someone less important, I’m going to be stuck talking to the only Chuck, dick or Harikrishna at a party… just in case.

Sleazy Egyptian guy

What am I worth?

My girlfriend tried to exchange me for camels during our Christmas trip to Dahab, on Egypt’s Sinai coast. “How many for girl?” she asked a Bedouin man selling rocks on the side of a desert road.

He looked me up and down critically, while chewing on one extremely long little finger nail, and shook his head: “She one camel, maybe two. But you, beautiful! You – one hundred camel for you”.

He gestured to a boy to bring him the humpy herd and reached out to grab D in what he considered a fair exchange. Realising our joke had gone a bit too far we scarped back to the safety of our waiting taxi.

Fearing how close D had come to being a Bedouin bride (and me to having 100 mangy camels to entertain) was one thing. But this was yet another instance of local men lusting after my girlfriend, and it was really beginning to get me down.

Sure, I minded that in a country where homosexuality is illegal I couldn’t put my arm around her and smugly retort, “sorry guys, she’s taken”. But if I’m honest, what I minded more was that I didn’t get the same level of – albeit unwanted – attention.

In fact, I barely registered on local guys’ radars – they seemed to bulk me in the same ‘useless’ category as the “where are the pyramids?”-Americans, who shuffled ignominiously behind a screaming tour guide, brandishing their ‘I AM ON THE YELLOW BUS’ badges, in case they got lost.

As we walked through Dahab town, a shabby sanctuary for ageing hippies and windsurfers, men standing beside their dusty shops would pretend to faint at the sight of my girlfriend. They hissed, blew kisses and begged her to talk to them: “Where you from?” They would routinely ask. “London? Ahh! ‘lovely jubbebly’!” they might respond, quickly followed up by “you have husband?”

I’d wait outside, throwing stones at stray cats while she was given a private tour of shops selling the same Cleopatra magnets and Shisha pipes as the 10 others she’d just been beckoned into.

This must be how Prince Phillip feels, I thought, forever standing in the background while wifey enthralls the common man with her charm, majesty and ability to feign interest in their banal little lives.

She would emerge from shops having been told, in no uncertain terms, that should she want for anything, anything, at all during her stay in Dahab, to just give said shop keeper a call.

What about me? I wanted a small bag of hashish and sun hat, could I call him? “He didn’t mention you”, D admitted without a trace of sympathy.

Beach boy Sayeed: "I can be your husband"

And it wasn’t just shopkeepers who declared their undying love for my lover. El Sayeed, the cute beach boy, would cater to her every whim – fetching towels, bottles of water and even on one occasion a bunch of flowers.

Other beachgoers were rudely neglected by Sayeed. I even pretended to drown in a last ditch attempt to get his attention, but he was too busy opening D’s Evian as though it was a bottle of fine wine. Despite my unglamorous flaying around in the water, it was a 12-year-old German kid who chucked me his Lilo.

I have a similar issue in London – builders never shout demeaning comments at me, I don’t get chatted up at bus stops and old men in parks never show me their willies.

Why?

“You give off a vibe”, my best friend Joe told me. “You’re just too, well, too intimidating”. He proceeded to do an impression of me walking along a street – scowling at the floor and bashing fellow pedestrians out of the way with my Mulberry handbag.

Hmmm. It was no wonder really.

So to start the New Year I’ve decided to try and look a bit more approachable as I go about my daily life. I’ll crack a smile and not treat all straight men as perverts or buffoons unless proven otherwise.

It might make me a bad gay, and an even worse feminist, but the fact is I won’t be happy until I get some unreconstructed testosterone wolf-whistled my way.