I’m so envious of my celebrity chums’ sexual adventures…

Spring is sprung. The sap is rising. And I am a bundle of regrets.

In recent months I have been making a podcast called Rosebud in which I interview famous people about their early memories. I talk to them about their youthful love lives, their adolescent adventures, the fun and games they got up to in their 20s.

And week by week, as the celebrated guests come my way, I have been discovering to my increasing dismay that they have lived lives of high excitement while I have barely lived at all. They have done things I never dared do.

Dame Judi Dench, now 89, had her first boyfriend aged six. He was the little lad who lived next door. She knew it was serious when he said to her one morning, ‘Judi, I think we should start to call each other ‘Darling’.’

Miriam Margolyes, 82, ran riot at university, giving pleasure in intimate ways to all sorts of fellow students and loving it. ‘Sex is lovely,’ says Miriam. ‘It’s gorgeous. Everybody should have a go as often as they like.’

Charles Dance, 77 and still devilishly handsome, closed his eyes and grinned as he recalled the sheer ecstasy of losing his virginity. It was his first memory of ‘pure, unadulterated joy’.

And this past week I recorded the Rosebud podcast with another handsome and gifted actor, Rupert Everett, 64, and by the time we’d finished, believe me, the microphone was too hot to handle.

Rup has lived — and some. When he was aged just 15, the future star of My Best Friend’s Wedding (and sometime friend of stars like Madonna), came to live in London’s Earl’s Court, discovered a notorious gay pub in the Old Brompton Road called the The Coleherne Arms, and didn’t look back.

During his late teens, and into his 20s and beyond, sex was central to Rupert’s existence. Young men, old men, he had them all — and women, too. Morning, noon and night, Rup was having it away with gay abandon. Literally. To hear him tell the tale, it sounds terrific.

As a teenager, I lived near Earl’s Court, too. I often passed The Coleherne. I never dared go inside. Nothing ever happened to me. Certainly, nothing in Rupert’s league. I was once propositioned by the comedian Frankie Howerd, but that’s about it.

Alcohol and drugs were part of the rich mix of Rupert’s wild years, but sex was the driving force. I have never met anyone before who has enjoyed so much sex and can talk about it so disarmingly — and hilariously. The truth is: I’m envious.

Rupert is knocking retirement age now, with a settled boyfriend, continent and content, but at least he has a rich and raunchy past to look back on. I have got nothing. I have never smoked. I have not touched even the mildest drug.

I remember as a student in the late 1960s being at parties where a cannabis joint would be passed around the room. My fellow students would close their eyes and inhale with beatific smiles on their faces. I would mutter ‘No thanks’ sheepishly and get away as soon as I could.

Once, by mistake, I tucked into a hashish brownie. The moment I realised what it was, I rushed to the sink to spit it out. I wasn’t just being a goody-goody, though that was part of it. I was frightened of getting into trouble with the law, but even more so, I was frightened of the effect the drugs might have on me. I did not want to lose control.

These days I don’t drink alcohol, but even when I did it did not make me very merry. I got the headaches without the highs.

I remember a night out in Glasgow years ago with Major James Hewitt, Princess Diana’s ex. James was charming and fun and, after a few bevvies, going back to our hotel, in his cups and happy with it, fearlessly James climbed a statue and put a traffic cone on top of it. 

I just stood gormlessly on the ground looking up at him in admiration and looking nervously over my shoulder in case a police officer was coming our way. Timidity is my middle name.

And if I wrote up the story of my love life it would have to be called One-and-a-half Shades Of Beige.

When I was about 20 I recall visiting some student friends in the flat they shared in Oxford. There were six of them, three boys and three girls, and stuck on to the fridge door were a series of Polaroid pictures of all six, starkers, romping in and out of the shower.

They were clearly having a whale of a time. I was simply too frightened to join in the fun.

I am a coward. I lack the courage. And it’s too late now. I saw the beautiful and brilliant actress Rachael Stirling the other day. She is currently in a play about Sarah Siddons, the much gossiped about eighteenth century actress often described as the first female star.

Seeing Rachael reminded me of a lunch I had with her wonderful mother, Diana Rigg, more than 20 years ago, when I was in my 50s and Dame Diana (my teenage crush when she was in The Avengers) was in her 60s. We talked about mature sex. ‘It’s horrific,’ Diana said, with a shudder. ‘You’ve got to do it in the dark because you both look so hideous — and the heaving of one body on top of the other… it’s simply exhausting.’

I have known many of the greatest beauties of our time, not one of them has made an overture towards me. I have never known a one-night stand, let alone been tempted by a bit of bondage.

Once, years ago, in Suffolk, my wife and I were invited to an orgy. It was after a recording of BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute and I declined, saying we were committed to having dinner with Nicholas Parsons, then in his 70s, and I didn’t think we could bring him along, too, because the hotel where the orgy was going to happen did not have a defibrillator.

Of course, I am not complaining. I have been blessed with the same wonderful wife for more than 50 years. I am happily and gratefully married. There are many things to be said for the quiet life.

In the podcast, Rup acknowledges the downsides of promiscuity. The occasional encounter with a sinister stranger (‘I screamed like blue murder and ran out of the building’), the fear of AIDS in the 1980s (‘Every morning I looked into the mirror dreading seeing the mark of the disease on my face’), the fact of his affairs hurting people he loved.

In his episode of the podcast the actor Charles Dance admitted that the temptations he had succumbed to over the years had cost him his marriage. I am not advocating drink or drugs or illicit sex.

I am just feeling a bit wistful that when I was young and fancy free, I played safe when perhaps I should have played the field.