It's a public house – not your house

In my misspent youth, writes Peter Rhodes, I was with a pal and his girlfriend in a pub when they started kissing.

The landlord told them to pack it in or leave.

New to the ways of pubs, we kids were horrified at this appalling restriction.

But a wise old drinker told me later: "It is a public house. It is not your house. Pubs have rules"

So they do. And when the gay couple Jonathan Williams and James Bull began kissing on their first date in a Soho pub recently and were asked to pack it in or leave, they were being treated exactly as any over-amorous straight couple would be treated.

Williams and Bull are petulantly complaining that their rights have been abused.

They should be celebrating a great blow for the principle of equal treatment for all.