“That’s an art that has largely gone now and very often it was the older gay men who mentored the younger ones. They were cautious and used Polari, “which I didn’t understand at all at first,” he laughs. 'They’d discuss chat-up etiquette, which included approaching someone and, if they weren’t interested, making it seem like a joke. It was full of straight people but towards one end of the room a group of gay men would meet up.” “You couldn’t say it was a gay bar because the concept didn’t exist. Luckily, Bernard was eventually introduced to a barman whose place of work served as a meeting place for a small group of gay men. “You’d spend hours trying to find somebody, visiting one set of toilets then another, enduring the cold and damp, spending a lot of time waiting for a fleeting sexual experience that wasn’t particularly satisfying,” he adds.
Bernard, 74, says he began cruising at a time when the concept of being 'out' didn't exist in its current form
