Titchmarsh, a gay lecturer and a row over teenage sex
TV host slams prof who ‘beds youths’
AS the next Chancellor of the University of Winchester, Alan Titchmarsh will be expected at all times to uphold the institution’s good name.
But, nearly six months before he takes up the post, he is already embroiled in a row with one of the university’s academics – on the subject of gay sex with teenagers.
The television gardener has attacked Professor Eric Anderson, 46, who boasted in a lecture that gay sex is best, that he targets 16 to 18-year- olds, that he had already had sex with more than 1,000 teenagers and men, and that he planned to double the total even if he had to pay young prostitutes. Mr Titchmarsh, 65, says he is a committed Christian who deplores Prof Anderson’s comments and is worried about the pressure ‘impressionable’ 16-year-old boys face to have sex.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s not that I’m homophobic – I’ve got some very good friends who are homosexuals. But I’m talking about sex with young boys. There’s a fine line between the age of consent and the other side of it.’
However two years ago the TV presenter chuckled when the professor – a guest on his afternoon chat show – declared: ‘Men just want sex with many people.’
Prof Anderson – said to be plan- ning a complaint about the criticism from Mr Titchmarsh – would only say: ‘I have not met Alan Titchmarsh since I was a guest on his show talking about the value of men cheating and of open sexual relationships.’
The American academic, who is married to a man, is Winchester University’s professor of Sport, Masculinities and Sexualities.
He gave his lecture entitled ‘Why gay sex is best’ to the Oxford University Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender society in 2011, but it only recently came to light.
As well as his boast of sex with ‘easily over 1,000 people’, he is said to have added that he enjoyed voy- ages on cruise ships because ‘it’s like sex tourism’.
In response to criticism he later said ‘sex should only occur between consenting adults’. But a small pressure group calling itself Because Children Matter began a campaign for Prof Anderson to be sacked.
Winchester University said he had been reprimanded, but defended him as an ‘internationally renowned gay scholar’.
When Mr Titchmarsh was last month appointed the next chancellor, or ceremonial head, of the university, he was asked by Because Children Matter to refuse the post unless Prof Anderson was sacked.
He replied that he was a commit- ted Christian and deplored the professor’s comments, but felt it was ‘not justifiable’ to sack someone ‘because their sexual mores differ from one’s own’. However, he would have ‘no hesitation in encouraging appropriate and justified action’.
Mr Titchmarsh, a married grandfather, has now told the Mail: ‘Prof Anderson was invited on to a stimulating, entertaining discussion on my show. Two years on I encounter him again. I’m now trying to step through this enormous can of worms without being bigoted.
‘He’s talking about young boys who are impressionable. Someone who is 16 isn’t magically prepared to resist pressure into sex. We have to be tolerant of everyone’s way of life, but I find it worrying.’ He added: ‘I’d also worry about people having sex with 16-year-old girls.’