I love being gay, but how I wish I'd been born heterosexual

My name is Ivan Massow. I am 39, and I am festering in exile in Barcelona because of corporate homophobia. Although quite shy, I am no stranger to publicity. Although not immune to failure, I am basically a success and, despite being gay, I have never allowed myself to so much as consider myself a victim. Indeed, as immortal as any other young millionaire by his early 20s; uneducated and from a deprived background, I sneered at those who allowed themselves to wallow in the self pity of victimhood. To me, viewing oneself as a victim seemed a self-fulfilling prophecy. But my view has changed. They are out to get me.

The "gay" preface (gay Tory, gay millionaire, gay foxhunter, gay entrepreneur) so liberally applied by a media fascinated by anyone gay who doesn't resemble the late John Inman, has finally come home to roost. I have reached the pink plateau. The bright spark that was precocious enough to head the Institute of Contemporary Arts and attempt, some say successfully, to shift the course of contemporary art, has been extinguished. The young man whose food was once the challenge of modifying the Tory party, now lunches in little restaurants near the beach with his Jack Russell. The entrepreneur whose wine was enterprise, work, contributing, employing people, making a difference, subdues this burning ambition with wine alone.

Last Sunday, as I boarded my flight bound for yet another hearing at Bristol High Court, I felt like a man climbing the executioner's scaffold with not so much as a crowd to see me go. Unrepresented, I was travelling to face Zurich Life's top lawyers in a case that I was convinced I was too impoverished to win. Liberated by the folly of the two suicide attempts that followed Zurich's destruction of my business, I now felt freed by failure. Failing is cathartic. It gives us a sense of perspective and teaches us about the important things. My biggest regret as I took a seat on the plane was the four days I'd be separated from my dog.

To the uninitiated, I look straight. I'm sure that's what makes thinking people uncomfortable. Although friends with all of them, there's nothing of the Dale Winton, Graham Norton, Boy George or Julian Clary about me. Is this what makes some men uneasy?

Sitting next to me was a lad. I don't know his name. He was cheeky, a footballer and straight. We got chatting about queers and how he'd hated Sitges, the resort he'd stayed at near Barcelona, because it was "full of them"; we speculated as to whether his manager who'd organised the trip was one.

I am not black. My mannerisms are not Jewish. I wear no turban and have no visible disabilities. My impediment is invisible. Sometimes I wonder whether, if all gays were born with a pink triangle on their forehead, acceptance would have come roughly at the same time as equality for my similarly marginalised, yet ironically hyper-homophobic brothers. This batty-boy white-boy's plague, hardly acknowledged at Auschwitz memorials, is a truly accepted outlet for a prejudice so commonplace we hardly notice it.

The conversation with the boy was one of many which I have learnt to accept, even enjoy. To do otherwise would be rude and lay me open to attack. This lad, charming as he was, didn't even add the usual: "I've got nothing against gays - it's when they force it down our throats". He was safe, so he thought. He was talking to one of his own. And for 100 minutes, despite my lack of footballing knowledge, I wallowed in my temporary reprieve from homosexuality.

This week, we all witnessed Lord Browne, a business legend, fall from grace at the hands of The Mail on Sunday. But for me, the week marked the first time I've learnt to have faith in our legal system. Despite my unrepresented and bungling attempt to explain myself to the judge, set against the excellence of Zurich Life's seven-strong legal team, I won the day when the judge ordered that my case should go to trial. But it was "the luck of the draw" more than anything. I am sure there are other judges that would have given me short shrift.

My case is pretty black and white. In 1996 I ran a 6,000 poster campaign criticising the claimant for its homophobic underwriting policy. Later, in 2003, when Blairism had swept homophobia under the rug of a new kind of civil un-liberty, and gay people could start getting life insurance and mortgages, Zurich approached me to, as they explained, apologise for the past. They'd changed, they said, and were embarrassed by their old underwriting position and, to prove it to the world, they would fund my business; creating a magnificent cathedral to a post-homophobic era.

Flattered and excited, we signed on the line and the deal was done. But when we settled into the bright new offices, we discovered that it wasn't so. They wouldn't so much as allow a same-sex couple to apply for life assurance jointly let alone give them it without the (abandoned, industry-wide) "lifestyle questionnaire", HIV test and large "gay" premiums. My business and I were paralysed; my institutionally valued [pound]22m brand was destroyed. Clients, and their referrals, understandably, abandoned us.