Veteran screen star Brigitte Bardot insists she holds a great deal of love and respect for gay men - even though she slams homosexual culture in her new book.

The French actress has lashed out at reports she's prejudiced against gays, by claiming her best friends - as well as most of the men working for her - are homosexual.

She says, "Apart from my husband, who maybe will cross over one day as well, I am surrounded by gays. For years they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidantes.

"Homosexuals are human beings like any other with qualities and faults. Some are my best friends."

But in her new book A CRY IN THE SILENCE she writes of gay people, "They jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through."

26/08/2003 13:46