Diversion: George Clooney on his knees

We don't normally bother with non-music-related people who get caught in Victoria Newton's net, but we're going to make an exception for the George Clooney's hands and knees story. This is running under Newton's Bizarre branding, but is credited to Gary O'Shea.

The nub of the story is that, while doing the Chinese Theatre wet-cement ceremony with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Jerry Weintraub, George essayed a rather weak joke:

“If I had to be on my hands and knees with three other guys, I can’t think of three better guys to do it with, and I mean that in the best possible way.”

Mr O'Shea seizes on this throwaway line:

BACHELOR GEORGE CLOONEY had fans bent double with laughter — with a joke about sexuality.

"Bent", do you see? Bachelor, do you see?

Because he made a vaguely gay gag, Mr O'Shea feels he has to ask, like an appalled bruiser in a bar: Does this mean he's gay or what?

No, he really does ask:

He divorced actress TALIA BALSAM in 1993 and wooed beauties including LISA SNOWDON and RENEE ZELLWEGER.

But he admitted recently he had “failed miserably” with women. So does he prefer men? Here we look at some jokey Cloos . . .

Yes, there's a sidebar of "Cloos". Seriously:

For ...

GEORGE wore TIGHTS as the Caped Crusader in Batman and Robin.

He provided the voice of a GAY dog in cult cartoon South Park and played a TRANSVESTITE in 1993 movie The Harvest.

He owned a 300lb MALE Vietnamese black bristled, potbellied pig named Max.

and against

WHEN asked if he would consider moving into politics, he confessed: “Run for office? No. I’ve slept with too many women, I’ve done too many drugs, and I’ve been to too many parties.”

He was married (though just once!) and dated movie beauties and models.

Let's leave aside for now Mr. O'Shea's apparent inability to tell the difference between transvestism and homosexuality, and the even more surprising inability to tell the difference between acting and real life. Let's not even wonder if Mr. O'Shea has ever heard of bisexuality, and just focus on the suggestion - "jokey" or otherwise - that owning a male pet somehow might mean you're gay. The Sun and other tabloids have spent decades subtly trying to suggest that homosexuality was in some way connected with paedophilia; this is the first time I can remember a British newspaper trying to suggest that 'gay' and 'bestial' are pretty much the same thing.