Double Take: Lord Browne's outing and disgrace could never happen here because we don't have any gay people, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
As we all know, there are no gay chief executives in this country. There are no gay businessmen in this country. There are no gay businesswomen in this country, or in the whole world, the universe or outer space, it would seem - but we'll get to that in a minute. Actually there are no gay people outside Dublin, and for years we didn't have them here. Urban life must turn some Irish people gay in some way - it's probably all that unaccustomed exposure to public transport. There are no gay people in the Dáil, and there are no gay people in the Garda and, strange to say, there are no gay people in either newspaper or broadcasting journalism.
Are we lucky or what? Other countries are not so lucky. This week the man who brought the giant oil company BP from a market value of £20 billion to £110 billion in just 10 years resigned in disgrace. According to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Browne is "the cleverest and most cultured boss of his generation". Three times he was named as the most admired businessman in the world. He was known, seemingly without irony, as the Sun King. His company pedigree was impeccable. He worked for BP for 41 years (Lord Browne is 59). He followed his father, Edmund, into BP after graduating in physics from Cambridge.
Now, it is true that times have become a little tougher for BP. It had to close a lot of its Alaskan oil fields due to pipeline erosion. In 2005, 15 of its workers died in an explosion at one of its refineries in Texas City. American regulators investigating that accident were scathing about BP's pressure on its managers to cut corners. But Lord Browne did not have to resign over the deaths of 15 men on his watch. (International chief executives have a wonderfully fatalistic attitude on these matters: Que Sera, Seraseems to be everybody's company song.) No, Lord Browne had to resign because he lied about how he had met his boyfriend.
The saddest thing in this whole story - apart from the 15 guys who died in Texas, but see above - is that Jeff Chevalier, whom Lord Browne met through an online escort agency four years ago, was Lord Browne's first real boyfriend. They socialised together, having dinner with Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and a lot of Lord Browne's posh friends. Hitherto Lord Browne had been accompanied on these occasions by his mother, but she died seven years ago.
Here is a man who is so close to those in power that his enemies renamed BP Blair Petroleum. Here is a man who brought BP into Russia in 2003 so successfully that he has Vladimir Putin's phone number - but not in that way. Here is a man hooking up with his first boyfriend when he is 55.
It is true that boyfriends are a minefield - as opposed to, say, an oilfield - and it can take the most intelligent person quite some time to get used to their little ways. Unfortunately, Jeff Chevalier proved, as first boyfriends often do, a misjudgement. When the relationship ended, and Lord Browne had finished supporting Chevalier in his transition to a non-millionaire lifestyle, Chevalier sold his story to the Mail On Sunday.
It was in seeking an injunction against the Mailthat Lord Browne lied, saying that he had met Chevalier while exercising in Battersea Park. In fact he had met him through an online escort agency called, rather winningly, suitedandbooted.com. (This story is rich in names. Jeff Chevalier had a previous wealthy boyfriend in his native Canada, whose name is John Trickey. Lord Browne, who tried so hard to seem like the prototypical man in a suit, was also blessed with the first name John.)
It was this lie, supposedly, which brought Lord Browne down. But really, it was the business culture of boorish masculinity, summed up on the business pages of the London Timesthus: "a City culture in which puerile abuse more familiar to the school playground is in full swing".
This week the gay entrepreneur, Ivan Massow, alleged in court that his former business partners, Zurich, were homophobic.
Gay people should not feel obliged to come out at work. No one wants to be the Ian McKellen of the oil industry, after all. But the rest of us should ask ourselves why someone of Lord Browne's standing felt obliged to persist in his denials. A few years ago, when asked by the Financial Timesif he was gay, he replied: "You've got the wrong man." Meanwhile, of course, the sniggering over his devotion to his mother and his love of ballet continued in executive circles.
God knows, it's hard enough for women to hack it in the boardroom. It's hard enough for straight men who do not exhibit an overwhelming fondness for golf, or for Manchester United.
Lord Browne came to this sorry pass not simply because he had spent his adult life sheltering his mother from the truth, but because he was sheltering his shareholders as well.
Like many of his business decisions, time has proved, unfortunately, that he was probably right.