Mundane celebrity celibates

[Guest guest]

The Pope

 

Stephen Fry, the British actor, comedian, writer, critic, novelist and taxi

driver, was the UK's most prominent and vocal celibate for several years,

although he has since rediscovered the alleged joys of wanton carnality.

 

Isaac Newton, the mathematician and scientist (said by some to be the greatest

scientist ever), was a virgin all his life. He was also very unpopular. Let us

move on.

 

Cliff "no soul" Richard, purveyor of family-acceptable and totally

non-threatening pop tunes, is one of the most vocal celibates of modern times.

It may well be this fact which has held back the cause of open celibacy.

 

Cosmopolitan agony aunt Irma Kurtz has been a celibate for years and years with

no regrets. Perhaps a Cosmo reader can fill me in with some more specifics.

 

Simone Weil was one of the best known European political thinkers of the 20th

Century and, as far as anybody knows, a lifelong celibate.

 

Also rumoured to be a lifelong celibate was the Dutch philosopher and

theologian Baruch Spinoza.

 

Dr. Temple Grandin, the American academic whose empathy with animals has led to

her being a highly successful designer of humane animal management systems, is

a voluntary celibate. The reasons are too complex to go into here, but those

interested can read the final chapter of Oliver Sacks' "An Anthropologist on

Mars".

 

Stevie Smith, poet and novelist, was celibate all her life, after sampling and

rejecting romance and sex in her youth. She was fiercely critical of those who

thought that her life must be emotionally impoverished by not having sexual

relationships anymore, emphasizing the depth of her friendships, especially her

bond with the aunt with whom she lived.

 

Pitt the Younger, legendary British Prime Minister, is generally agreed by

historians to have died a virgin.

 

Nikolai Tesla, who developed the system of alternating electrical current that

is the standard nowadays worldwide, was a self-proclaimed celibate.

 

Carole Channing, the Broadway musical star of "Hello Dolly" fame was celibate

in her marriage to Charles Lowe for 41 years.

 

Morrissey, the British singer and former member of the Smiths, was openly

celibate for several years.

 

G. H. Hardy, twentieth century English mathematician who made ample

contributions in number theory and who co-authored the famous Hardy-Weinberg

law of population genetics. He was also the mentor of legendary prodigy

Srinivasa Ramanujan (who was probably also a life-long celibate).

 

Paul Erdos was the most prolific mathematician in history, having participated

in more then 20,000 papers. He was born in Hungary but never held a home or a

job, relying instead on the hospitality of other mathematicians with whom he

collaborated and on the money he received for conferences. See The Man Who

Loved Only Numbers, by Paul Hoffman (Hyperion, 1998).

Antonio Gaudi, the spanish architect most famous for the Segrada Familia in

Barcelona, is said to never have had sex.

 

Alan Christie Wilson of the blues-rock group Canned Heat was a voluntary

celibate in the later part of his life, according to his authorised biographer

Krisna Radha. The reasons seem to be a mix of medical, spiritual and issues

from childhood.

 

"Divorced novelist Beryl Bainbridge revealed that she gave up men because, when

she was 56, she felt having a physical relationship with a man was 'no longer

dignified', and anyway her life was far too full of other things like writing,

children and friends." - quote from a Daily Mail article by Jenny Nisbet

(approx.) 1st December 1998.