If we needed proof, it came in the form of Charlie Sheen: HIV didn't go away

Plus: Skype in prisons will rehabilitate, not radicalise

An adult film star claimed Charlie Sheen never informed her of his diagnosis (AP)

Whatever happened to the Tombstone? Not Ed Miliband’s plinth of platitudes, but the chilling 1986 ad that made us scared to have unprotected sex? It has taken a playboy actor’s declaration on national television that he’s HIV positive to bring the virus back on to the front pages and into the consciousness of heterosexuals.

The Tombstone ad, with its grim commentary by John Hurt, was born out of desperation – the need to get people to understand they were in charge of their own sexual health. For the first time anywhere in the world, a government funded an important message about sexual activity and it proved to be highly successful.

Thirty years later, being diagnosed with HIV is not a death sentence, but the stigma remains. Very few high-profile people have publicly announced they are positive, unless they have been forced into doing so by the media or blackmail, both of which apply to Charlie Sheen. Very few heterosexuals admit to being tested for HIV. I did so decades ago, and I’m declaring an interest: after a close friend died of Aids in the 1980s, I turned to raising money for HIV/Aids charities. It is a cause dear to my heart, because often people are infected without ever realising it, and they need help and support to live fulfilling, normal lives.

Young women and girls account for 62 per cent of new HIV infections worldwide. The disease is not just a Third World problem – new figures released this week show that one in five people with HIV in Britain does not know they have the virus. That’s more than 18,000 individuals who could be having unprotected sex and passing the virus on.

Over the past decade, the number of British-born women who have tested HIV positive has risen by 42 per cent, with women over 50 the fastest-growing age group. One possible reason is that women who divorce or split from their partners in middle age may wish to experiment sexually, especially if they were with one boring bloke for years – but many will remain oblivious to the risks.

Another generation that seems woefully ignorant are teenagers. In the 1980s, safe sex was a simple message. Now, information about HIV is contained within the statutory “basic” curriculum in schools in England, but there is no guidance about how to get key messages across. And with the growth of faith and free schools set up by special interest groups, how do we know that the critical information is being given to all young men and women. They might know about sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, but what about HIV? Do they think (wrongly) it doesn’t matter unless you are male and gay?

Funding for HIV testing and support comes from local NHS trusts, but with funding cuts this will vary wildly from one area to another. Now, Public Health England is launching home-testing kits which involve taking a small finger-prick blood sample, but the message we need to take from Charlie Sheen’s declaration is that HIV is a subject we must not forget. Education is all.

Skype in prisons will rehabilitate, not radicalise

Should prisoners be allowed to chat to their families via Skype? A jail in Northern Ireland allows inmates serving sentences of less than six years to make video calls, and the scheme has been such a success it could be extended. Skype allows prisoners a peep into their homes, to talk to their children and even spot the family pet, stuff that’s not possible in a normal visit.

Justice Secretary Michael Gove wants to sell our Victorian prisons and replace them with fewer, hi-tech super-jails. If that happens, prisoners’ families would have even further to travel for visits. Although there’s a danger that Skype could be used to send hidden messages, it’s worth the risk.

I know that victims will complain that prisoners don’t deserve another concession, but anything that promotes family life and counteracts isolation, which leads to radicalisation, can only be good.

No, Ken, that’s not how we behave in south London

On the surface, Ken Livingstone and I should have a lot in common. We are almost the same age, born to working-class parents in inner London, and we grew up with our grandmothers sharing the family home. We presented a television series together in the 1980s, when I experienced his “sardonic” wit at first hand.

This week, London’s former Mayor caused outrage by telling an MP who’d suffered from depression that he needed psychiatric help. When asked to apologise, Ken retorted: “I grew up in south London, where if someone’s rude to you, you are rude back.”

In so many ways, that is thoroughly offensive – casually slandering thousands of polite Londoners in a whole heap of postcodes. It is as fanciful as self-styled professional cockney EastEnders star Danny Dyer talking about the “good old days”.

After Jeremy Corbyn phoned up, Ken made an unreserved apology, but you sense his heart wasn’t in it.

Earlier in the week, I spent a very enjoyable evening watching Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse on stage, their first live tour after 25 years producing some of our most memorable comic characters, from Stavros to Loadsamoney. Ken reminds me of Harry’s irritating old buffer who constantly repeats “you don wanna to do it like that. Do it like this”, but no one is listening.

Perhaps Ken thinks he’s being ironic; sadly he’s more like a character from On the Buses. The BBC plans to revive several hit sitcoms from yesteryear, including Porridge and Keeping Up Appearances. I’m sure they’ll find a role for Ken.

Universities should broaden minds, not narrow them

What is happening to free speech at our universities? I thought the point of further education was to encourage debate and dissent. There’s an ugly new trend which seeks to silence any speaker who holds a view considered unacceptable by politically correct students, clumsily dubbed “non‑platforming”, which I translate as “censoring”.

Germaine Greer was invited to give a lecture on women in politics and society to Cardiff University, but because she told an interviewer: “I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock”, she was considered to hold “transphobic” views, and a petition was started to cancel her visit.

This week, Germaine gave her lecture, under heavy security, and it passed off without incident, but not without whingeing from disgruntled activists. York University had intended to celebrate International Men’s Day on Thursday but after a lobby group claimed that the celebration would “amplify existing, structurally imposed inequalities”, the university feebly gave in and said that in future its work on inequality would focus on women. By the way, poor white boys are seriously lagging behind at school and smart women earn more than men until the age of 35.

I’m not saying that women aren’t discriminated against, just that it seems ludicrous to have Women’s Days and not the equivalent for men. Now, Cambridge University has decided to remove historian David Starkey’s contribution to a fundraising video, after protests from students and academics who claimed he had made “racist and sexist” comments. At this rate, we will soon resemble North Korea.