It was 35 years ago that I last visited Hove, to see my great-aunt. She was 97. I was young, Tory — and secretly gay. That was not the kind of thing you mentioned in Hove, and certainly not to Dolly.

On Wednesday, I returned — to see a young, openly gay Tory campaigning like a tornado for the Conservative Party. He was the parliamentary candidate. And, truth to tell, Dolly would have adored him.

On Thursday, I took the Southern Railway to another Sussex constituency, Arundel & South Downs. And the Tory candidate here? Young, gay, and open about it. Dolly would have adored him too.

George Orwell once remarked that, in much of the South of England, it was impossible to throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop. Today there are great swaths of the Home Counties where it is impossible to throw a brick without hitting a gay Tory parliamentary candidate. Nicholas Boles and his crew met me at Hove station wearing jeans and jay-blue T-shirts, in a jay-blue Hyundai driven by Dawn. Within minutes we were met by more blue T-shirts and more vehicles, though Francis Maude, the former Cabinet Minister, had drawn the line at the T-shirt. There was even a young man in pink corduroy trousers, but he turned out to be heterosexual. Don’t they dress outrageously?

The area Mr Boles was to canvass was suburban; hardly the preserve of the exotics or the young-professional set who have moved in along the Hove seafront. Holmes Avenue and Elm Drive are a mix of smart 1930s semis, flowering dwarf cherries, mock-Tudor former council-house terraces, door knockers in the shape of brass rabbits and rather too many hyacinths. The inhabitants, who dine at seven, park their modest cars on crazy-paving in front of the house and do not wear shoes indoors, are nurses and teachers, pensioners and self-employed landscape gardeners. Nice people. Middle-middle-class English.

And they are totally unfazed by the fact that a parliamentary candidate might be gay. “Who cares about his gender?” said Kath Ross, endearingly, at Number 139.

“I’ve only had one person who was bothered,” said Dawn (Mr Boles’s agent). “The girls all think he’s an absolute dreamboat.”

With a “Hi!” here and a “Hi there!” there, the absolute dreamboat stalked ahead of us, well over 6ft tall and easily outpacing his panting team. “Ooh – aren’t you tall!” squealed an elderly resident.

When nobody answered his knock, Mr Boles flicked his “Sorry you were out” candidates’ calling card through the letterbox; except that it didn’t look like a candidates’ calling card and it didn’t say “Sorry you were out”. It bore a handwritten “Wish you’d been here” and a casual snapshot of the absolute dreamboat lolling on the Hove waterfront.

I got to a front door in Elm Drive just as Mr Boles had finished a sympathetic chat with the single mum within. “Is he married?” she whispered as he strode off.

“He’s gay,” I said.

Her face fell. “Tell him: ‘No problem’,” she said — then giggled, “but tell him I’m disappointed.”

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