For a generation that prides itself on being accepting and tolerant, some fans seem a lot like the people of supposedly less enlightened times who would cheer, chuckle and whisper behind their hands at Liberace, Johnnie Ray or Noël Coward. Worse, in Mendes’ case, the speculation is based on age-old stereotypes — that Mendes has a “girly” voice, that he’s not “manly,” like it’s 1954.

Mendes’ new song The Mountain tells us: “Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you gotta say / You can say I’m too young, you can say I’m too old / You can say that I like the girls or boys, whatever suits your type.” Back off, Arthur Rimbaud! Everything feels so timid and insipid, so scary, scary to tame.

I promise this won’t turn into “eeh bah gum when I was a kid”, but at the age of 14 I was gleefully singing Marc Almond’s Catch A Fallen Star lyrics from his 1983 album Torment and Toreros in my bedroom. – an encouraging portrait of different varieties of sexual activity – and I’m afraid that, after 41 years, I still can’t think of repeating any of them here. The lyrics of today’s pop stars feel like a precipitous drop into a pre-’60s heyday.

But the furious speculation that surrounded idols like Tab Hunter, Johnny Mathis or Rock Hudson in the days before homosexuality was legalized (let alone endlessly – and tediously – “celebrated” with LGBTQIA+ Pride) it survives. Not long ago, a male friend of mine was in a relationship with a moderately successful Hollywood actor who was terrified of being exposed. They were supposed to meet on the private jet rendezvous in distant places. That sounded incredibly glamorous and romantic from the outside. But all the time I kept thinking, why all this hiding, these days?