Just in

Articles by Oliver Fortune

Avatar photo
About Oliver Fortune

A doctor formerly specialising in sexual health, Oliver has written widely on matters relating to sex, relationships and counselling. He is divorced and has one daughter. He is a keen skier and mountain biker. More Posts

Speaking to an expert

I always say there is no substitute to speaking to speaking to someone at the coal face if you want to get to grips with an issue. I have been following the discussion on sick people consulting their pharmacist rather than their GP. At the moment there is pressure on the NHS as a sick person with a [...]

February 15, 2018 // 0 Comments

What a nightmare

Like many a Ruster a good night ‘s sleep comes to me rarely. As I write this I have had 3 hours sleep, awoken and will probably get back to sleep in a couple of hours’ time. I read somewhere that 8 hours continuous sleep is a recent phenomenon and in the nineteenth century such a break [...]

October 10, 2017 // 0 Comments

La Cage aux Folles/ Theatre Royal Brighton

At ther moment gay drama is heralded but it was not always thus. La Cage aux Folles with its anthem I am What I am made a huge contribution. However it should not be forgotten that drag acts have existed for centuries in theatre. In Japan there were the “Onigita” professional male cross [...]

August 25, 2017 // 0 Comments

Everything works fine until it doesn’t

One of the ironies of the age is that anyone of ‘a certain age’ (like me) can be found harping on about how things were in their youth – and how baffling or stupefying the modern world increasingly tends to be – and yet half the time we’re also part of it. On the Rust there’s always [...]

August 19, 2017 // 0 Comments

Pride weekend

Last weekend some 300,000 people visited Brighton for pride weekend. The fact that ‘gay’ has been dropped is significant as the 48 hours of Bacchanalian revelry has little to do with gay celebration and more an annual party that is beneficial for restaurants, bars and letting agencies. [...]

August 8, 2017 // 0 Comments

International cross cultural relationships – do they ever work?

In the week I had a drink with a Thai lady of my acquaintance. Although she did not know this it was in the context of various discussions and debates I have had with Bob Tickler, his p/a Polly and her best friend Grania over men who take Thai brides. Bob took the view that Thai women were neither [...]

June 3, 2017 // 0 Comments

I’m not quite so sure it has

The Simon Cowell vehicle Britain’s Got Talent returned to ITV1 last night for the start of a new series and I am not ashamed to report that, for my sins, I was among its viewers. I am familiar with both Britain’s Got Talent and The X-Factor, Cowell’s other big show, largely because in the [...]

April 16, 2017 // 0 Comments

Losing it on the descent

For me, Frankie Howerd was one of those ‘Marmite’ comedians – you either loved or hated him. As I remember his career, he originally made his name in the British late Music Hall and early radio era (he even had his own comic strip in The Beano or some similar kids’ publication) but then [...]

March 12, 2017 // 0 Comments

In the wee small hours

All my life I have ‘suffered’ from partial insomnia, frequently awaking during the night and for several hours in the early hours. I have deliberately put ‘suffered’ in inverted commas as there is a tendency to regard wakefulness as some sort of disorder if not depression. [...]

November 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

A visit to the barber

Yesterday I made my monthly visit to the hairdresser. I have been using the same guy for nearly two years. I would not describe him as a friend but we get on well and I am surprised by the level and amount of his confidences. It would be wrong to go into too much detail but as a student of [...]

October 20, 2016 // 0 Comments

1 2 3 4 … 7

Copyright © 2026 The National Rust | Design by Premonition