Neanderthal I may be, but — for all the actor’s charms — I’d be less than thrilled if my son said he was marrying Stephen Fry

WHEN our 27-year-old son and his longstanding girlfriend announced their intention to marry, I felt I had a duty to fake surprise. In fact, I’d known from almost the first moment I saw them together that they would end up at the altar, judging that they were made for each other and no other outcome was imaginable.

As for our other feelings, my wife and I had no need to feign our unqualified joy at the prospect of welcoming Lisa into the family. Pretty, clever, accomplished and sweetnatured, she is everything a loving parent could wish for in a daughter-in-law.

Which brings me to a surreal thought that has been haunting me all week. How would I have felt if our son had announced that he would like to present his intended . . . and into the room, blushing prettily, had tiptoed not the lovely Lisa, 32, but the gargantuan, shambling form of our official national treasure, 57-year-old Stephen Fry?

In the case of Robert and Melinda Spencer, aged 57 and 52 respectively, this is no mere outlandish fantasy. It is something they’ve actually experienced. For they are the parents of Elliott — 27, like our newlywed son — a stand-up comedian who is to be married to Mr Fry.

Of course, it won’t have come as a shock to the Spencers since they must surely have known their son is gay. And I must say they have behaved impeccably, telling the Press what any son would wish his parents to say about his choice of spouse.

Doubts

‘We’re over the moon,’ said Elliott’s dad, a surveyor, while his wife added that the couple had known each other for ‘quite a long time’, and she had met Mr Fry many times. ‘It’s great news,’ she said.

Now, for all I know, they were expressing the unembellished truth — and if they had any private doubts, they did a good job of keeping them to themselves.

But if they genuinely had no such reservations about welcoming Mr Fry as a future son-in-law, all I can suggest is that they are very atypical of our generation.

As for myself, I confess that in their circumstances I would have had to draw on all my acting skills to put on even an unconvincing display of pleasure.

Certainly, I would have sought reassurance in running through the positives, reminding myself that it’s not the parents’ feelings that matter on these occasions, but only the children’s. After all, if the happy couple love each other, and if it looks like lasting, that must be what counts for most.

I would have told myself that any spouse of Mr Fry could at least look forward to being very comfortably off for the rest of his days, jetting hither and thither to meet all sorts of interesting and famous people.

Indeed, Elliott seems to have been having a whale of a time with his fiancé, tweeting breathless accounts from all over the world about his meetings with George Clooney and his wife Amal (‘they are as lovely as they seem’), Al Pacino (‘can’t believe I met him the other week’), Emma Thompson (‘lovely company’), Jimmy Carr, David Cameron and J.K. Rowling, who declared him a member of Gryffindor house at Hogwarts.

I would also remind myself that Mr Fry is a man of many gifts, who can be hugely engaging company. Indeed, on the one occasion I met him, he was courtesy and charm itself.

So much for the plus-side of the match. But then I think of the minuses — and, let’s face it, they amount to a pretty impressive pile.

First, there’s that dramatic age gap – and before I expose myself to a Twitter storm of hatred from the gay lobby (I’ll risk doing that in a moment), let me say that I would have felt pretty squeamish if our 27-year-old had said he planned to marry a woman of 57.

At the risk of being branded an appalling hypocrite, since even at 61 I can see the attractions of women in their 20s and 30s, I reckon I would also have felt very uncomfortable if any 27-year-old daughter of mine had thrown in her lot with a man of Mr Fry’s age.

Then there are his much publicised fits of deep depression, which must surely be a worry (though let us hope that marriage will help lift that veil).

I would have very strong reservations, too, about Mr Fry’s unapologetic past abuse of cocaine — a drug whose trade has left a trail of blood across the West Indies and South America, blighting the lives of millions.

Irritation

If I were his father-in-law, I know that I would also have great trouble suppressing my irritation over his twee use of language (‘a certain cat is out of a certain bag’, ‘adorable tweets are bringing me close to sobbing’). However, I can see that this is a trivial objection, which I could probably overcome for the duration of a family Christmas dinner.

But I can delay that potential Twitter storm no longer. For I’d be disingenuous to pretend I don’t also have difficulty in accepting the idea that a man can marry another man, or a woman a woman.

I entreat you not to misunderstand me. It would break my heart if any son of mine felt I was such a bigot that he couldn’t tell me he was gay, or thought that I’d love him any the less for it. I’d also like it on record that I came round long ago to civil partnerships, and I’m a little ashamed of my initial opposition to them.

But as I understand marriage, it’s an institution for child-rearing and mutual support between the sexes, which means the real thing can only be between a man and a woman.

Of course, you’re welcome to say that my views are Neanderthal and don’t matter a damn. But it is surely an incontrovertible fact that many millions share them.

I strongly suspect, too, that some of my other objections to the Fry-Spencer match will have occurred to many, if not most, parents of 27-year-olds.

But here is the truly remarkable thing. In all the copious coverage of the engagement over the past eight days, I’ve detected only two raised eyebrows. One belonged to the Mail’s own, ever-brave Amanda Platell, who drew disapproving attention to the age-gap. The other was a throwaway line from our equally doughty Sarah Vine, who floated the idea that a part of Mr Fry’s appeal to his fiancé may lie in the latter’s showbiz connections.

But no other paper that I’ve read has suggested there’s anything otherwise remarkable about this forthcoming marriage — let alone anything iffy or rum. Nor has anyone attempted to exploit the story for comic potential — odd, surely, since both participants are comedians.

Mocking

Even the Sun — notorious in the past for such headlines as ‘Pulpit poofters’ on a story about gay vicars — treated the story exactly as it would have done any heterosexual engagement, reporting: ‘Loved-up Stephen Fry is “deeply touched” by the response to our revelations yesterday that he plans to marry toy-boy lover Elliott Spencer.’

One possible explanation is that my trade has been seized by a collective fit of sensitivity to other people’s feelings. But I see no evidence of that elsewhere, as we go on mocking politicians, accusing famous actresses of being too fat or too thin, or laying into minor royals for their ghastly taste in clothes.

No, the truth is that most of us are simply terrified of the awesome power of the gay lobby to silence criticism. In particular, we’re scared of Mr Fry’s ability to mobilise his Twitter mob of 8.3 million followers, condemning us at the touch of a ‘send’ button to torrents of abuse if we give a hint of offence.

Of course, some may say this is a salutary development. But can it ever be truly healthy if newspapers don’t dare print thoughts harboured by millions — whether about mass immigration, benefits for single parents, gay marriage or anything else short of incitement to violence?

One final question. This was the week celebrities and politicians from all over the free world linked arms in defence of a Paris magazine’s right to give gratuitous offence to Muslims. OK, nobody is going to shoot me. But how many of them, I wonder, would show the same solidarity with a paper that showed similar disrespect for Mr Fry’s nuptial arrangements?

With that chilling thought, I’ll belt up, wish the happy couple well — and count myself infinitely blessed that my son chose Lisa.