Most young men will have been in situations of having to make a choice between falling in with the group or withstanding peer group pressure. The situation may be sexual, or it may involve drinking to absurd excess. In some groups its basis could be criminal at worst, and Asbo-deserving at best.

My worst two sexual solecisms were when I was in my late teens. On both occasions a very attractive but, to my young eyes, mature woman in her late thirties, disappeared with some excuse or another while we were enjoying an after-dinner drink, only to come back shortly afterwards looking even more gorgeous but to all intents and purposes naked. I was so naive that I behaved as if they were still fully clothed and continued with the whisky and coffee. The memory of my ingratitude and ungracious gaucheness still haunts me nearly 60 years later, even though it was only based on a fear of being judged wanting sexually by such sophisticated women.

My idea of sex in hell would be group sex. My advice to any young man is to make your excuses and leave before the action starts. Someone always has a good idea where the conversation and later activities are going and there is no point, as the army term has it, of staying around and looking like a spare prick in a brothel.

On one occasion in the early Seventies I was asked to a long and boozy lunch by a female journalist. I was meeting her editor and the idea was that I should write a column for their magazine. At mid afternoon it was suggested that we should adjourn to a club that catered for swingers and seemed to operate 24 hours a day. I made my excuses and left.

My action would have pleased the commander of my troop in the Army. When we passed out as officers we invited him to a party at a nightclub in Swallow Street. Rather sportingly, he came along, but left at an early hour. Before he went he looked around at the women and said he would give us his final bit of advice: “Never pay for it”. He ended his career as a field marshal. It must have been sound advice.

Others I have known have failed to take the field marshal’s advice. One cabinet minister I knew asked, when visiting the Far East, to be taken to a brothel. Some junior diplomat obliged and all went well until the moment for action started. The minister fled.

I once had as a patient the British ambassador to another country, where women were provided after dinner. Usually he would have made his excuses and gone but the situation was diplomatically tricky at the time. The ambassador thought it would be as rude to turn down the host’s choice of woman as it would to criticise someone’s best brandy. Unfortunately this particular brandy was infected with gonorrhoea but we patched him up infection-free before his wife flew back to London.