“We had no money, nowhere to go, but we knew we could go to Piccadilly Circus and become prostitutes We weren’t troubled by it. We saw it as a means to an end, an easy way to get money.” He spent only a few months on the street, surrounded by “scary, nasty people”, before a guardian angel appeared in the form of a Hampstead doctor. “He gave us the attic of his house – no favours required, he just gave us the rooms He’d done the same before. Someone like that is a really good person.”With an address, Somerville could find a job and he started working in the department store Heal’s, where he stayed for five years. Then he made the unlikely leap from shop assistant to pop star. “I went to squat with a bunch of friends – creative, intelligent, political people.

We got involved in a community project funded by the Arts Council and we made this video. I sang a poem and somebody, I think it was Richard Coles, who was later my partner in the Communards, said I had a very strange sound and I should use it.” His falsetto is his musical trademark. “It’s not really a singing voice, it’s untrained, it was just sort of a sound that I was making. Then I met Larry and Steve [Bronski], we started writing songs together, and before I knew it we had a record deal as Bronski Beat. It was all so quick, and it was something that I had never dreamed would happen to me, because I honestly didn’t have any desire to be in showbiz or the entertainments industry.”The trappings of success amazed him “It didn’t make me hugely rich, but I’m very comfortable.

I got more money than I ever dreamed I’d have – enough to buy a house and to know that I wasn’t going to have to worry about bills and things for the rest of my life Incredible,” he says, with a quite touching wonderment. He was glad he could his fame to promote gay rights and left-wing politics. “I definitely think my visibility and openness contributed to today’s awareness of homosexuality. I was one of the first people to be that open and that up-front It was a natural thing to do. I’d always been political as a kid and I saw my sexuality as a political thing, which I still think it is.”Somerville was involved in Red Wedge, the music movement that supported the Labour Party. But although he still votes Labour, he is disillusioned with its New incarnation.

“I still believe there should be free education and healthcare, these are fundamental basics that should be funded by the government. And the one party you think would champion these things is saying they have to keep the voters happy – and the voters are too selfish to pay the extra ten or 20 pence a week to fund these things. I think it’s over now for radical politics.” He sighs, more sad than angry. “All you have is your principles and your dreams of what an ideal situation would be But you know that it’s never going to happen.”. “Put on some old clothes and have fun destroying them. Doing this with a friend or lover is particularly delightful.

Roll in the mud, squirt each other with a hose and even tear each other’s clothes.” Practise something called the matador walk – “hold your shoulders erect, and take your steps with confidence and authority. Watch John Travolta in the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever for a good example.” And then go out for a long walk and “urinate into the ground and feel your connection to the earth as the fluid from your body flows back into the earth”. All good fun, no doubt, but, erm, why? Because such behaviour will help you live longer, according to Thomas R Blakeslee, author of The Attitude Factor, a new book that claims to “extend your life by changing the way you think”. He says that “attitude jogging” – techniques to exercise the mind in the same way that jogging exercises the body – are the key to long life.
Blakeslee, 59, who already has two best-selling self-help books, The Right Brain and Beyond the Conscious Mind, under his belt, is the partner of ex-PR guru Lynne Franks – herself the author of Absolutely Now! A Futurist’s Journey To Her Inner Truth. Franks has embraced Buddhism and new-age philosophies with a vengeance since 1992, when she sold her phenomenally successful PR agency and left her husband of 21 years.