Back in the hippy-trippy days of the early 70’s, a rising young musician by the name of David Bowie was using shock tactics to increase his profile at every opportunity. Drawing upon his theatrical as well as musical experience, Bowie developed an image that was as confronting as it was radical.

He adorned the cover of his 1971 album The Man Who Sold the World in full drag and flowing locks. Then the drag persona mutated into Ziggy Stardust, an androgynous character in skin tight body-stockings and heavy make-up, who flirted outrageously with lead guitarist Mick Ronson. This man was definitely out to shock ‘the Establishment’.

It came as little surprise, therefore, that in 1972, whilst still promoting his Ziggy Stardust persona, he told a Melody Maker reporter that he was gay. Just how avant-garde could this man get! We were barely legal and yet here was this audacious creature being quite blatant about it.

The image was duly honed over the next few years by the publication of photographs of Bowie being intimate with the likes of Mick Jagger, Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. And with the photos came the rumours that he’d slept with any or all of them too.

But by 1976, his story had already changed – possibly to accommodate the very obvious presence of his seriously extroverted wife Angie. In 1976 he told Playboy that he was bisexual. And there was even a rumour that he had met his wife because “they were fucking the same bloke”.

And then, in 1983, he told Rolling Stone magazine that declaring his bisexuality “was the biggest mistake I ever made”. Just in case his position wasn’t entirely clear, he went on to add that he had always been “a closet heterosexual”.

Quite what prompted this major turnaround has been the subject of much speculation. Some have argued that the homophobia that accompanied the emergence of AIDS made him realise that being gay was no longer a good marketing ploy.

Of course Bowie himself has never made such a statement but, in an interview in 2002, he did allude to the hostility he experienced in the USA, which he described as “a very puritanical place”. And, as if to distance himself completely from the gay community, he said, “I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be representative of any group of people.”

Well, not if it’s going to impact on his bank account, obviously.