"Hey, Ned, were you near any of the bummings in London?"

"Good moaning. The cafe is under threet from suicide bummers."

etcetera etcetera

There was something achingly poignant about the opening ceremony of the 15th international AIDS conference in Bangkok last week. Thousands of delegates had gathered for the expressions of self-congratulation which are central to such forums.

Then they departed, no doubt to sample the wonderful restaurants of the Thai capital, leaving the hall empty for the only HIV-positive delegate present, a man named Paisan Suwannawong, to make his address.

He spoke to a practically deserted chamber, before breaking down in tears, watched no doubt by just a couple of cleaners. A useful guide to the true purpose of such conferences.

Another sense of what these jamborees are all about is evident in the guest list, which included Richard Gere, Dionne Warwick, Ashley Judd, Rupert Everett, the world's first elective absentee-president, Mary Robinson, and the exact opposite, Ugandan President For Life Yoweri Museveni. Do you think, even for a second, that the hall would have been empty if Richard Gere had been addressing it?

Yet how refreshing to see our old chum Yoweri, to whom this country has been giving millions even as he got chronic indigestion absorbing the billions he looted from the Congo, being feted by the morally superior ranks of the great and good. What luscious palace was he dining in when poor Paisan tried to describe his own possibly imminent death to four walls and two Mrs Mops?

No, I don't speak lightly of AIDS. It is one of the greatest catastrophes of all time. But unlike the Black Death, it began as, and largely remains, a disease of volition. Aside from a person being raped, in the early stages of the epidemic anyway, victims had to consent to a sexual deed, or an injection, which would transmit the disease. One does not - generally - consent to being bitten by a flea.

And from the outset, the primary vectors of the disease were (and remain) men, thinking solely with an organ not just remote from their brain, but apparently entirely disconnected from it.

AIDS spread in the West among male homosexuals, some of whom would regularly have anal sex with dozens of partners a night: and how really, really stupid must you be to think that such conduct has no consequence? Yet at the very height of the AIDS epidemic, "intelligent", well-informed men like the British comic-genius Kenny Everett and Graham Chapman of Monty Python both bounded out of the closet, engaged in unprotected encounters, contracted AIDS and died.

They preferred anal sex to life: suicide bummers.

If lethal pleasure was the preference of educated Western males, then how can you expect better from illiterate African males, whose urges are not homo- but heterosexual, and who uninhibitedly consort with prostitutes?

These hearties infect the girls, and they infect their other clients, who being dutiful husbands all, proceed to give the virus to their wives, and possibly their unborn children.

Moreover, many African men believe that the cure for AIDS is sex with a virgin - thus the epidemic of rape of infant-girls across Africa. A majestic sex, the male sex, no?

All of which rather justifies the sub-text of Bangkok: what women can do to prevent the spread of AIDS. However, the answer was the usual vapid "empowering" UN/feminist mumbo-jumbo.

In other words, not much, especially since across the Third World, men place sexual gratification before survival: hence no love, no duty, no restraint, no fidelity, guide their conduct, nor condoms guard their health.

Sexual desire is the primary vector both of men's lives and the spread of the AIDS pandemic, and that's that.

But it didn't need a conference in Bangkok to reveal this most obvious of idiotic truths. Moreover, all the various - and no doubt important - papers could have been exchanged by e-mail. So what did the 20,000 delegates actually achieve (apart, that is, from sending poor Paisan Suwannawong to Coventry) and at what price?

At a conservative cost of €10,000 per delegate, that's €20 million for last week's jollies. No doubt all those delegates departed with a glow of moral superiority warming their bellies, which is terribly important of course.

Meanwhile, across the world millions of men are daily engaging in sexual practices that are tantamount to Zambian roulette, with five loaded chambers; and the sixth? Maybe.

The main financial contributor to the worldwide anti-AIDS campaign is of course the US, a fact you are as likely to see proclaimed in the media overall as you are to meet a Jewish Hassidic vegetarian rabbi lending a hand in the Olhausen sausage factory in the Porktown Industrial Estate.

But George Bush is nonetheless talking through his bottom when he proposes that Africans follow the ABC approach: Abstain, Be Faithful, Condoms.

He might as well urge the Zimbabwean army to construct particle accelerators from the smouldering ruins of all those abandoned, once white-owned farms.

Bangkok's was the fifteenth such conference in the history of AIDS, and in the lifetime of these little get-togethers - probably costing many hundreds of millions of dollars - the spread of the disease has faithfully increased to exceed the growing size of the conferences.

This follows the noble precedent of those decadently luxurious eco-summits - remember Rio? - which grew ever larger and less productive as the poles melted, the tides rose, but most important of all, the first-class flights to and from the conference venues were booked solid.

Thus the standard questions of in-flight attendants to those urbane and suited UN crisis-managers as their polished, thin-soled Italian shoes sink yet again into the plush carpet aboard the Jumbo. Famine? Earthquake? AIDS? Champagne? Lobster?

There was something achingly poignant about the opening ceremony of the 15th international AIDS conference in Bangkok last week. Thousands of delegates had gathered for the expressions of self-congratulation which are central to such forums.

Then they departed, no doubt to sample the wonderful restaurants of the Thai capital, leaving the hall empty for the only HIV-positive delegate present, a man named Paisan Suwannawong, to make his address.

He spoke to a practically deserted chamber, before breaking down in tears, watched no doubt by just a couple of cleaners. A useful guide to the true purpose of such conferences.

Another sense of what these jamborees are all about is evident in the guest list, which included Richard Gere, Dionne Warwick, Ashley Judd, Rupert Everett, the world's first elective absentee-president, Mary Robinson, and the exact opposite, Ugandan President For Life Yoweri Museveni. Do you think, even for a second, that the hall would have been empty if Richard Gere had been addressing it?

Yet how refreshing to see our old chum Yoweri, to whom this country has been giving millions even as he got chronic indigestion absorbing the billions he looted from the Congo, being feted by the morally superior ranks of the great and good. What luscious palace was he dining in when poor Paisan tried to describe his own possibly imminent death to four walls and two Mrs Mops?

No, I don't speak lightly of AIDS. It is one of the greatest catastrophes of all time. But unlike the Black Death, it began as, and largely remains, a disease of volition. Aside from a person being raped, in the early stages of the epidemic anyway, victims had to consent to a sexual deed, or an injection, which would transmit the disease. One does not - generally - consent to being bitten by a flea.

And from the outset, the primary vectors of the disease were (and remain) men, thinking solely with an organ not just remote from their brain, but apparently entirely disconnected from it.

AIDS spread in the West among male homosexuals, some of whom would regularly have anal sex with dozens of partners a night: and how really, really stupid must you be to think that such conduct has no consequence? Yet at the very height of the AIDS epidemic, "intelligent", well-informed men like the British comic-genius Kenny Everett and Graham Chapman of Monty Python both bounded out of the closet, engaged in unprotected encounters, contracted AIDS and died.

They preferred anal sex to life: suicide bummers.

If lethal pleasure was the preference of educated Western males, then how can you expect better from illiterate African males, whose urges are not homo- but heterosexual, and who uninhibitedly consort with prostitutes?

These hearties infect the girls, and they infect their other clients, who being dutiful husbands all, proceed to give the virus to their wives, and possibly their unborn children.

Moreover, many African men believe that the cure for AIDS is sex with a virgin - thus the epidemic of rape of infant-girls across Africa. A majestic sex, the male sex, no?

All of which rather justifies the sub-text of Bangkok: what women can do to prevent the spread of AIDS. However, the answer was the usual vapid "empowering" UN/feminist mumbo-jumbo.

In other words, not much, especially since across the Third World, men place sexual gratification before survival: hence no love, no duty, no restraint, no fidelity, guide their conduct, nor condoms guard their health.

Sexual desire is the primary vector both of men's lives and the spread of the AIDS pandemic, and that's that.

But it didn't need a conference in Bangkok to reveal this most obvious of idiotic truths. Moreover, all the various - and no doubt important - papers could have been exchanged by e-mail. So what did the 20,000 delegates actually achieve (apart, that is, from sending poor Paisan Suwannawong to Coventry) and at what price?

At a conservative cost of €10,000 per delegate, that's €20 million for last week's jollies. No doubt all those delegates departed with a glow of moral superiority warming their bellies, which is terribly important of course.

Meanwhile, across the world millions of men are daily engaging in sexual practices that are tantamount to Zambian roulette, with five loaded chambers; and the sixth? Maybe.

The main financial contributor to the worldwide anti-AIDS campaign is of course the US, a fact you are as likely to see proclaimed in the media overall as you are to meet a Jewish Hassidic vegetarian rabbi lending a hand in the Olhausen sausage factory in the Porktown Industrial Estate.

But George Bush is nonetheless talking through his bottom when he proposes that Africans follow the ABC approach: Abstain, Be Faithful, Condoms.

He might as well urge the Zimbabwean army to construct particle accelerators from the smouldering ruins of all those abandoned, once white-owned farms.

Bangkok's was the fifteenth such conference in the history of AIDS, and in the lifetime of these little get-togethers - probably costing many hundreds of millions of dollars - the spread of the disease has faithfully increased to exceed the growing size of the conferences.

This follows the noble precedent of those decadently luxurious eco-summits - remember Rio? - which grew ever larger and less productive as the poles melted, the tides rose, but most important of all, the first-class flights to and from the conference venues were booked solid.

Thus the standard questions of in-flight attendants to those urbane and suited UN crisis-managers as their polished, thin-soled Italian shoes sink yet again into the plush carpet aboard the Jumbo. Famine? Earthquake? AIDS? Champagne? Lobster?

Thank you for pointing that out.

You berk.