Alan Titchmarsh condemns gay Winchester professor
TV host Alan Titchmarsh has laid into a gay professor at the University of Winchester, over his controversial statements about sexuality.
Sport studies professor Eric Anderson says he has been the target of a “sustained campaign” by anti-gay Christian groups, after he revealed at an Oxford University debate in 2011 that he had slept with “easily over a thousand people”, and joked he was a sexual “predator”.
He said at the time: “I like sex with 16, 17, 18-year-old boys particularly, it’s getting harder for me to get them but I’m still finding them.
“I hope between the age of 43 and the time I die I can have sex with another thousand — that would be awesome, even if I have to buy them, of course, not a problem.”
TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh, who was announced last month as the new Chancellor of the University of Winchester, told the Daily Mail he deplored the professor’s comments.
He said: “It’s not that I’m homophobic – I’ve got some very good friends who are homosexuals. But I’m talking about sex with young boys. There’s a fine line between the age of consent and the other side of it.
“Prof Anderson was invited on to a stimulating, entertaining discussion on my show. Two years on I encounter him again. I’m now trying to step through this enormous can of worms without being bigoted.
“He’s talking about young boys who are impressionable. Someone who is 16 isn’t magically prepared to resist pressure into sex.
“We have to be tolerant of everyone’s way of life, but I find it worrying. I’d also worry about people having sex with 16-year-old girls.”
He revealed that Christian groups had pressured him to turn down the post of Chancellor over the professor’s comments, but concluded that it’s “not justifiable” to sack someone “because their sexual mores differ from one’s own”.
However, Mr Titchmarsh added he would have “no hesitation in encouraging appropriate and justified action”.
PinkNews reached out to Professor Anderson, but he declined to comment.
