‘We all jumped off the end of the pier I remember once, as a dare, on New Year’s Eve.
It was horrendous, reported, I believe, in the Evening Argus at the time. My mother was furious yet again, all these dykes picked up on Brighton beach by the coastguard.
I lost a shoe, I was most upset about that. I remember I had a false hairpiece, they were quite fashionable at the time, big sort of tall hairdos, and it came off in the sea, with my shoe, which is probably on a Parisian beach by now or wherever the other side of Brighton Channel is. I don’t know, mad as hatters. It was freezing too, it was snowing I believe, bloody freezing.
We just all did it for a dare, about six or seven of us. The ambulance came and we were all taken off to some hospital there to see if any of us had suffered a heart attack. Sobered us up, we could have killed ourselves, I mean it was just outrageous.

Anyway they released us, they thought we’d probably be alright but we’d got nowhere to go, had we, we hadn’t got any money, of course we’d spent it all, and we’d still got a lot of alcohol in us, anyway we were dragged off to the police station and spent the night in cells, where I might say, the WPC’s at the time plied us with even more booze, telling us it would warm us up. It was New Year of course. I’m sure they knew we were gay, and I’m sure they were too, definitely, yes.
Oh, it was fun, just jumped off the end of the pier, fortunately the tide was up.’

With your back against the Pier look across the road to the Sea Life Centre. Be careful to watch out for cyclists before the crossing.