Rowan Pelling: Gay and witty - Rupert, you're my perfect man

You don't need to be a soothsayer to know that, amidst the volcanic spew of fourth-rate celebrity memoirs launched this autumn, only one will be worth the paper it's printed on. I was salivating over my toast and marmalade at last week's serialisation of Rupert Everett's exemplary stab at the genre, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins.

Everett, like David Niven, is in the ocean-liner class - his anecdotes sweep you along with effortless panache, yet happily there's a dirty tugboat splash of Graham Norton in the mix too. This means you get affecting and funny stories of Everett's childhood, such as his pash on his nanny which led to an obsession with Mary Poppins, alongside riveting observations on the antics of the mega-famous. Who wants to read Marco-Pierre White rambling on about his mates Michael Winner and Koo Stark, when you can be reading our Rupe on Sharon Stone? "'Hon,' said Sharon, looking at me adoringly, 'I can turn a gay man straight in five minutes!'" This girl-on-gay-boy dynamic becomes a running theme.

Everett says of Madonna, "[She] demanded a sexual response from everyone. It did not matter if you were gay. You were swept up all the same." While the tiny, fragile waist of Paula Yates (with whom Everett did have an affair) mesmerised him to such an extent that "even if you were gay you could not help but feel turned on." By the time the adult Everett was poised to meet his childhood idol, Julie Andrews, I was fully expecting him to write: "Although I'm gay, you'd have to be a eunuch not to want to bury your face in Julie Andrews' mammoth jubbly-wubblies." (I'm reliably told by a male friend, who once interviewed Andrews, that she does have the most incredible pair of bazookas.)

I'm sure Everett's ready appreciation of feminine charm is one reason I can't help liking him. "Can't help", by the way, is the phrase I notice everyone uses of the actor, as though he were a particularly self-indulgent vice, like cocaine. There's something so appealing about a spectacularly handsome gay man who makes the effort to spread his wit and flirtatious charm generously across the sexes. Gay men who express a lack of interest in women as a species resemble nothing so much as that large section of straight men who also believe quality time should be spent exclusively with other males. Which all goes to show that sexuality alone is a uniquely clumsy tool to categorise anyone by. Just as many women are now looking for a male partner who's "just gay enough" (he'll watch Desperate Housewives), I increasingly find myself taken with gay men who are "just straight enough". Everett brilliantly captures the escapism implicit in such relationships in the description of his relationship with Yates: "She was married. I was gay. These constraints operated like a kind of safety net and there were no obstacles between us. We were both released from the endless struggle to 'become' something..."

Everett is bang on the mark. The intimacies that straight women have with gay men are blessedly free of all those niggling pressures that someone wants kids, or a wedding ring, or a divorce (or thinks that you do). They're invariably more forgiving of your physical deficiencies, and more appreciative of your wit.

And if you're a woman in a long-term relationship who forgets herself enough to have sex with her gay best friend... Well, it hardly counts as infidelity, does it? As it happens, I've never made the beast with two backs with any of my gay BFs, but the question of sex often hangs tantalisingly in the air. That's our compliment to one another. It's only polite to make it clear that you find their physical charms almost overwhelming and, were circumstances different... I've met these men in exactly the same way I've met any other good friend - scanning the room at some social event and locking eyes with someone charismatic, who looks like they might be the most amusing person at the party, and then, joy of joys, finding you have chemistry. The question of sexuality, or gender, come to that, is a very minor one. It's all about knowing your tribe.

I'm sure my flexibility in this area has something to do with the influence of my treasured gay uncle, who's always been besieged by adoring women. One admirer, some years ago, even offered him a large financial settlement if he walked her up the aisle. And he'd make a splendid husband. Sadly, the only woman he ever fell in love with and, indeed, had sex with, died more than 20 years ago; but, then, inevitably, she was married to someone else. But he retains the intimate, important friendship of the only woman his male long-term love ever slept with. How civilised this circle squared by sex seems to me.

And how much less squalid than the deliberate wounds, point-scoring and seething jealousies of the traditional heterosexual arrangements. I particularly admire the actress Sian Phillips' current aménagement: a household where she resides with two gay male friends. When I am old, and presuming my beloved, long-suffering husband (who always insists I will drive him to an early grave) is dead, I would be happy to live with one of my gay friends. Then we could ask Rupert Everett to join us, and I could be "nanny".