RON DAVIES’S attraction to high-risk sexual encounters should not be regarded as abnormal, a leading psychologist said last night.

Oliver James, the author of They F*** you up: How to Survive Family Life, said Mr Davies was simply displaying tendencies shown by many successful people. While Mr Davies’s acknowledged bisexuality might have been a contributory factor to his interest in casual sex, it should not be regarded as compulsive, he said.

“For whatever reason some people find danger one of the main elements in sexual excitement,” Mr James said. “And that is not all that rare. It’s why you have phrases like ‘oh, you are wicked’ and ‘naughty but nice’.

“But while being bad and being excited are often associated it does not necessarily mean the person is compulsive. Compulsive behaviour is when you can’t stop doing something even though you know it is damaging you. There is no evidence to prove that is the case here.”

Mr James added that casual sex with strangers was far more common among gay men than women. “Certainly if you look within the context of homosexual men what Mr Davies is supposed to have done is not uncommon in the gay community and homosexual men are generally more promiscuous than heterosexual men. That is the same for bisexual men having gay encounters.”

But Mr James said another factor, which would certainly explain Mr Davies’s encounter on Clapham Common, was his success as a politician.

“If you look at a lot of highly successful people the one thing they have in common is rampant promiscuity,” he said. “You don’t just need to look at Bill Clinton. There has been a whole book written on the sex lives of American Presidents. What we find is a great many successful men use sex as an outlet and they will often have illicit affairs and more than one partner.

“It is a way of channelling their energies when they may have to be more constrained in public life. This could well apply to Mr Davies when he was a minister.”

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