Our Number One Gay of all time for many, many reasons. Was ever there a sharper wit? No. A fine mind, producer of The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest and the awesome Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde was also brave: he was open about his homosexuality, and he paid the price in puritanical Victorian Britain. Wilde went to gaol for two years for ‘gross indecency’ with other men, but the turmoil he created would fuel a movement towards tolerance. After his release from prison Wilde fled to France, never to return. He died in Paris, destitute, in 1900 at the age of 46. Pop a dyed green carnation in your buttonhole every November 30th and salute his memory with a glass of absinthe.

You may know Coward only for his brief appearance in the Italian Job as top con Mr Bridger. Don’t be silly. Coward was a playwright, composer, director, actor, singer and wit, with a unique, flamboyant style. We would have included Coward simply for Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which he wrote and recorded, but his body of work in huge. During World War 2 Coward even ran the British propaganda office in Paris, and so successful was his work that he was scheduled to be arrested and killed had the Germans won. His own home was destroyed in an air raid, so Coward simply moved into the Savoy Hotel for the rest of the war.

Reg Dwight is simply too entertaining to not be on our list. Long before Lady Ga Ga covered up her mediocrity with big wigs and silly shoes, Elton was out-glamming them all, and with proper tunes to back up his platformed grandeur. John has sold a staggering 250 million records, is perhaps the only openly gay man ever to have been accepted by the backward fraternity that is the modern day footballer, and, what is more, he provided the piano and backing vocals on the England World Cup Squads anthem Back Home in 1970. Watch Tantrums and Tiaras if you're ever feeling low. It's a hoot.

How could we not have a second gay Knight of the Realm on our list? McKellan isn’t just responsible for bringing Gandalf into our lives, he is also a good egg and a founding member of Stonewall, the influential gay rights group. In 1988 McKellan visited then Environment Secretary Michael Howard to protest against anti-gay legislation Section 28. At the end of the meeting Howard creepily asked for McKellan’s autograph for his children. McKellan signed the paper “Fuck off, I’m gay.” Likes to refer to himself as Serena since his Knighthood.

Capote was a spiteful bitch, to be fair, but his writing was sublime. It’s not really the brevity and lightness of touch of Breakfast at Tiffany’s that brings Capote on to the list, but the milestone in popular culture that is In Cold Blood. The book describes the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959 and the subsequent capture, trial and execution of their killers. Capote went to Kansas and over the course of four years conducted hundreds of interviews with dozens of people, including the killers. The book was published in 1965 and became a ‘nonfiction novel’ international best seller, often imitated, never bettered.

What, I hear you screech, is George O'Dowd doing on our list? The man who chained a fellow to his radiator when his sexual advances were rejected and was jailed for his troubles? George is on the list for his humour, his candour and his mighty fine singing voice. Back in the day many thought George was a girl when they first heard the awesome Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. He soon put them straight. George survived drug addiction and tabloid vilification and still had the heart to attack anti-Gay Tory policies with underground acid house hit No Clause 28.

Ginsberg was simply a huge figure. Vigorously opposed to militarism, materialism and sexual repression, Ginsberg kicked open a door of freedom that many stepped through. A bitter tirade against capitalism and conformity, the opening lines of Howl still have punch, perhaps more now than ever: ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.’ Ginsberg even confronted the Hells Angels when they threatened to break up an anti-Vietnam protest – and impressed them so much they ended up supporting him.

If you are so narrow-minded and lodged in the 1970s that you see gay men as limp-wristed Nancy boys who wouldn’t say boo to a daffodil, think on jellyhead. The most celebrated member of the Argead Dynasty, Alexander the Great, was famously homosexual. In his brief 32-year lifetime Alexander was undefeated in battle and is respected as one of the finest commanders of all time. By the time of his death Alexander ruled over an Empire that stretched from India to Greece. Hardly the work of a shrinking violet.

What better thing can a man do with his time on Earth than bring beauty and pleasure to other men? The music Lionel Bart left behind will continue to echo through time centuries after the great man died. What tunes, I hear you ask. Well, rest assured you know many of them. Food Glorious Food, Where Is Love, Consider Yourself, You’ve Got To Pick a Pocket or Two, I’d Do Anything. All the music and lyrics to Oliver! are Bart’s. And of course he also found time to bang out pop hits like Livin’ Doll. What better legacy to leave than tunes which form a thread of the fabric of what it was to be British in the 20th Century?

Of course, there is one better thing a man can do with his time on Earth than to bring beauty and pleasure to other men, and that is to work selflessly to improve the lives of other men. Peter Tatchell has been doing this for a nearly half a century. At school in Australia he launched campaigns supporting the rights of the indigenous aborigine population. In the early 70s he worked for the Gay Liberation Front, he founded OutRage in 1990 and he has been beaten up by the police in Moscow and by Robert Mugabe’s thugs trying to get equal rights for gays. Top man on any island.