Perving on a child has nothing to do with being gay but for James Delingpole it has. He’s mixed it all up in his book Thinly Disguised Autobiography (Picador, 2003). The reader is supposed to believe that his obsession with a child of twelve or thirteen years is somehow part of trying to figure out if he’s attracted to his own sex or not.

The reader is invited to be cool with the idea that if the child was female, his advances towards her would be more acceptable. Poor ole goofy Delingpole. It’s not his fault the kid turned out to be a boy. How was he to know? As if it makes any difference. Boy or girl. What’s he doing writing so openly about pedo lust disguised as a crisis of sexuality, masquerading as fiction? Merging sexual fantasy with the innocence of a child talking about a blowpipe is morally wonky and deeply unsettling for the reader.

There are hints of Vladimir Nabokov 1955 novel Lolita which tells the tale of pervey poet, Humbert Humbert who becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'.

Lolita gave a literary voice to the pedo and emboldened others to express what would otherwise remain unsaid. We got insights into the working mind of the predator. The novel was a kind of high brow licence to divulge secrets and normalise taboo. Sympathy for the devil. The child was flirting with him. She wanted it, kind of thing.

Delingpole is also trying to elicit our understanding in his book. It’s easier when it’s kinda fiction, when the lines are blurred. We’re expected to meet his painful honesty with compassion, not suspicion. He’s not gay, he tells us repeatedly. He just fancies the girl/boy child. It’s a one-off, we’re led to believe. Could happen to anyone. He only had the hots for the boy because he thought he was a girl. Then it was too late.

Delingpole recently told orthopaedic surgeon turned podcaster Doc Malik that he’s proud of his unfiltered portrait of his mental thought processes “when I was 19 on an overland trip in Africa when I wasn’t as certain as I am now about my sexuality”.

The issue for those who follow James Delingpole is that he says a lot of things that make sense. He called out the Covid scam early. He used his Delingpod platform to expose the fraud. He questions the official narrative in ways that are convincing if not always correct. It’s got to count for something. He’s been set up as the Christian face of the resistance. The guy who tells you everything is a lie in the mainstream media while writing for The Spectator. Delingpole was the weed smoking pal of David Cameron at Oxford university who desperately wanted to join Dave and Boris Johnson as a member of the Bullingdon Club, famed for its debauchery and bad manners.

Apparently he’s different now. He no longer wants to be in the club of highly paid reprobates and chancers, despite hints to the contrary. We’re supposed to believe that he’s been saved. The Psalms. Think of the Psalms.

It’s not too dissimilar to Russell Brand’s operation. His ‘Come to Jesus’ act deflects from his past digressions and shuts down honest inquiry. Poor persecuted Russ. Leave him alone! Plus he says stuff that’s generally true mixed in with his MAGA quota. So what’s the problem? Can’t we all just get along? Why create all this ‘unnecessary division’?

Maybe it is necessary division. Just because someone says things we agree with from time to time doesn’t give them a free pass on more serious matters. We’ve collectively hit a moment in history when tolerating excuses for sexually targeting a child has become indefensible. No literary flair can daintily skip over the gravity of the crime. It’s not a lark. It’s not something to brag about in a book or an article. It’s not something to normalise or to be proud of after years of reflection. It’s plain creepy. The offending adult needs to know we’re not cool with the line being crossed. Surely this is the line and if it’s not the line, then what is?

It should be the line.

It should be where we push back with all our might. That’s our job as adults.

Delingpole crossed that line but is making out he was just expressing himself and there’s nothing to see here. It was years ago anyway, so who cares? Move on. What does it matter?

It matters in that it’s showing us the character of the person who’s been positioned as the conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy theorist. We’re told to question everything. Yet when Doc Malik attempted to question Delingpole about his infatuation with the child in Africa, he turned sour.

Why put it out in the public domain in the first place if he doesn’t want to talk about it? Obsessing over a child publicly is hardly going to pass unnoticed. Ten years after Thinly Disguised Autobiography came out, on August 20, 2013, Delingpole contributed to a piece in The Telegraph about male writers on their romantic regrets. Of all the stories he could go with, he chose the child in Africa one confirming what most of us had already suspected. It’s not fiction. Delingpole wrote:

It would be impertinent of me – and also dishonest – to look back on romantic trysts past and wish I’d ended up with anyone other than my wife. I love Tiffany and I love our children.

But let me tell you instead about a much, much more interesting instance of love at first sight. You could call it my ‘Tadzio from Death in Venice’ moment because my inamorata was, in fact, a beautiful blond youth.

I was 19 at the time, just out of school, still a virgin and, I suppose, mildly uncertain about my sexuality. It happened at a border crossing between Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Waiting interminably with my fellow overlanders to have our passports stamped by the inevitable corrupt customs officers, I spied across the other side of the grass hut one of the most exquisite creatures I have ever seen. Our eyes met and I was smitten.

I thought it was a girl at first, though I couldn’t be totally sure.

She – or was it a he? – was travelling with a man old enough to be its father. God knows what their relationship was but they weren’t family. We got chatting. They were Belgian and I was the only one in our group who spoke reasonably fluent French.

Discovering that the pretty thing was male, I felt surprised and mildly guilty to realise that it didn’t stop me fancying him.

There was an electricity between us. The older man – ruined, malarial – could see this and glowered jealously. It made me despise the older man and wish I could rescue my Tadzio from his sordid clutches. Lust didn’t come into it. (Well, not much.)

It was pure, romantic, all-consuming. As day turned to night (clearly, our border bribe hadn’t been enough), I began fantasising about our escape. My ephebe and I would run off and end up God knew where but it wouldn’t matter – the point was we would be together forever.

Anyway, we didn’t. But imagine how wonderfully, fascinatingly different it would have been if we had! No school fees, no family responsibilities. I could have been bigger than Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry, another one blurring the lines. He’s seen as a hero in Delingpole’s not-so-fictional Thinly Disguised Autobiography. The pair were close at one time in real life. Maybe he was inspired by Fry’s frankness about his sexual inclinations at boarding school in his autobiography Moab is my Washpot (1997). Interestingly the title for his book is from Psalm 60:8.

Moab is my washbasin, on Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph.

Two Psalm loving quares! ‘Sir’ Stephen Fry, unsurprisingly, got knighted by ‘King’ Charles in March 2025 for services to mental health awareness, the environment, and God knows what else. No such honours for Delingpole, in public at least. Maybe it’s because he really did choose the road less travelled and really is on the side of the people and not an intelligence agent. Maybe it really was just a one-off thing in Africa. The heat might have got to him.

Strange that he wanted to share the story though.

Twice.

T’would make you wonder.

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