A reader: “Mr. Derbyshire—Even more recently: Roberto Benini shares a bed

with his male friend in ‘Life is Beautiful.’ I just thought it was a

European thing.”

I cannot resist recycling a Fleet Street story from the waning days of the

hapless John Major’s administration in Britain. The government had launched

a “moral values” campaign, promoting old-fashioned virtues, family life, and

so on. This campaign was given the name “Back to Basics.” The campaign

suffered something of a setback when it was learned that the (male)

government minister responsible for promoting “Back to Basics” had shared a

bed with another (male) government functionary on an official trip to

France. Once this became known, the minister concerned issued an indignant

denial of any impropriety, insisting that he and his colleague had shared a

bed simply to save taxpayer funds, French hotels being outrageously

expensive. Nothing untoward at all had occurred, he firmly insisted. One

of the London tabloids ran this denial under the heading: BACK TO BACK TO

BASICS.