BP Lord Browne Thought Gay was wrong until outed by his toy boyfriend
When Lord Browne was in charge of BP, had anyone told him he would one day invite a journalist into his home to discuss his sexuality, he would have said they were insane. Homosexuality was the last thing he expected to talk about in public; after all, he never spoke of it even in private. The former CEO spent half a century in the closet, so terrified of letting his secret slip that he never talked about himself at all, confining his conversational repertoire instead to "the news, and politics, and business. That's what you'd talk about."
With his first boyfriend, Jeff Chevalier, who went on to out the then BP boss. Photograph: Daily Mirror
But since a Sunday tabloid outed him seven years ago, his life has become a series of unimaginable surprises. For Browne, the revelation has been how much less homophobic the world is than he had always feared. He has now written a book about homosexuality within the business world, and the revelation for many readers will be how homophobic that world still is.
The Glass Closet tells the story of Browne's 38-year career and double life, which began when he joined BP in 1969, and ended with a single phone call from the Mail on Sunday in January 2007, informing him that it was about to publish a kiss'n'tell by a former Brazilian escort, Jeff Chevalier. He had been Browne's first and only boyfriend; the pair met in 2003 on a gay escort website and were together for almost three years. But in public, Browne was a heterosexual bachelor.
In a panic, he applied for an injunction, but told his own lawyers a fateful lie, that he and Chevalier had met jogging in Battersea park, which, once submitted to the court, could constitute perjury. Browne soon retracted the untruth, but by then it was too late; the injunction was quashed, the story was printed, and Browne resigned. Six months before his 60th birthday, and for the first time in his adult life, he was suddenly no longer Mr BP but instead a very publicly out gay man. His reason for writing The Glass Closet is, he says, quite simple. “I wouldn't want anyone else to go through what I went through."
This motivation to spare others is common among victims of injustice who become campaigners, but it's about the only thing Browne has in common with a typical activist. He lives in a town house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, where a butler leads me through rooms that could pass for an art gallery and out across a courtyard to a private library purpose-built to hold his antique book collection. A chauffeur-driven Bentley is waiting to whisk him off to the launch of a Matisse exhibition when we have finished (he is a Tate galleries trustee). Browne is meticulously groomed, courteous and so flawlessly formal that I get the impression he wouldn't even know how to be casual. To call him an activist feels like an implausible label, and he agrees at once.
"I've never thought of myself as a gay activist. It's a very grand title. There are people who've done some extraordinary things as activists, such asPeter Tatchell. I'm not in the same class as them."
When Browne talks about the fears still keeping businesspeople in the closet, he is a powerful advocate, applying the same logic he once used on mergers and markets. Yet talking about his own emotional world, he sounds like someone trying to learn a foreign language. It's not that he's reluctant to talk about his feelings, but after a lifetime of self-censorship, it's as if he hasn't a clue how to.
Browne knew he was gay by the time he left boarding school, and didn't tell a soul. His mother, a Roma Jew, was an Auschwitz survivor and passed to her son an abiding fear that to be different was to invite persecution. "I internalised that to mean being gay was basically wrong, because if you got caught it would be very dangerous." He studied physics at Cambridge, but clocked up none of the social or romantic experiences most students take for granted, and graduated straight to a job with BP. His first posting was to the wilds of the Arctic Circle, where the brutal machismo of oil industry culture became abundantly clear to him.
In Browne's mind, there was no choice. He had to keep his sexuality secret, or his career would be over. "You had to blend in, be chameleon-like, so no one would notice your private life. But you could be noticed in your work life, so you sublimated a lot into that. People say minorities have to overachieve, and I guess I did." Once in a blue moon he would sneak into a gay bar, which was thrilling and terrifying, but his public identity became subsumed in BP. "Eventually it became very much two lives, and it was quite exciting."
He began to think of himself as a sort of spy – "James Bond-style" – and became quite addicted to the jeopardy. "It became exciting, and I would say to myself that it taught me skills that were useful in other parts of life." He told himself that hyper-vigilance and steely self-control made him a better businessman – "but this is probably quite a self-justification." He grins. Does it sound crazy now? "Totally. But back then it obviously looked pretty sensible."
To be fair, I don't think it was entirely fanciful. I've seldom met anyone who gives so little of himself away (I would hate to play him at poker), so he must have been a nightmare to negotiate against in business. Then again, the psychological isolation that made him so inscrutable may well also explain why at times he could be staggeringly obtuse. How else to explain why he thought he would deflect speculation about his absence of a spouse by living with his mother, and taking her as his date to company events? He was, he smiles, blissfully unaware that deploying one's mother for cover was a well-known gay cliche.
Early in his career, he thought perhaps he could quietly come out once he was further up the ladder. But the higher he climbed, the bigger his public profile grew. In 1995 BP was just a struggling national company, but its new CEO launched a series of audacious takeovers and mergers that turned it into the second largest oil corporation on the planet. Browne became known as "the Sun King", described as Britain's most successful businessman, and almost certainly its most highly paid. Critics accused him of pursuing a reckless cost-cutting regime; budget cuts were linked to an explosion at a Texan refinery in 2005 that killed 15 workers, and to the2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, even though this happened on CEO Tony Hayward's watch (Browne left BP in 2007). An earlier spill, in Alaska in 2006, might have meant curtains for a less revered leader, but Browne's reputation made him all but unassailable.
His devotion to the job left little time for friends. His father, an army officer, had died in 1980; an only child, he was overwhelmed by loneliness when his mother died in 2000. For the first time in his life, aged 52, he risked a relationship with a man.
Lord Browne with his mother. He first risked a relationship with a man after her death in 2000. Photograph: Courtesy of John Browne
To anyone of Browne's generation, what happened next may be perfectly recognisable. To anyone under 25, it will sound incomprehensible. When Browne fell in love with Chevalier, he didn't announce their relationship, nor even acknowledge it to his closest friends. The words, "I am gay" had passed his lips only twice in his life, and when Chevalier moved in, Browne didn't even mention his new domestic arrangement to his butler.
"Life back then was a series of non-statements – not understatements but non-statements – that everyone walked around with," he tries to explain. For example, when Browne was invited to appear on Desert Island Discsin 2006, he and BP's head of press worked together for weeks on what to say if the question "Are you gay?" came up, without either ever asking or answering it themselves. Chevalier would sometimes accompany Browne to social events, and met Tony and Cherie Blair, Jude Law and Sienna Miller, Elton John. "But it was done very, very carefully. If I thought the host would ask any questions, I'd avoid the situation." Amazingly, no one ever did. "This may sound bizarre," Browne says, smiling, "but it's surprising how people behave. If you say nothing, often they say nothing, and nothing will happen. It's a series of non-statements and people draw their own conclusions. But nothing is clear. Nothing is said."
Browne thought he was being careful, but now sees it differently. "A friend said, 'Well, of course what you were really doing was daring people to pull you out, and you didn't know you were, but you shouldn't have been surprised when it happened.' And I think, now, that probably the time was coming when what I was doing, and who I was, was becoming unsustainable."
It never occurred to him that Chevalier might betray him. After they broke up, Browne continued to support him financially for nine months, but once the funds stopped, Chevalier demanded more. The implicit threat in an email – "I do not want to embarrass you, but…" – should have been obvious. Yet Browne, who had lived his whole life in a state of high paranoid alert, failed to notice. "I simply didn't register what was going on. I couldn't believe he'd sell our story, so I ignored him." How could he have been so naive? "Probably just because I'd never experienced it. My level of naivety in this area must have been incredibly high." But he must have been aware of the tabloids' enthusiasm for a kiss'n'tell? "Well, yes. But you can always say to yourself, that won't be me."
Yet fear of exposure had overshadowed his whole life. "Absolutely. And in business, I would have been well aware of any possibility of risk. But in my private life, an entirely different approach took place, and I think it's because of my lack of experience in relationships."
He was still in shock when he instructed lawyers to apply for an injunction, but that wasn't why he told them a lie. He'd been telling the lie for years, if anyone asked how he and Chevalier met, because the truth felt too embarrassing. "I think I deluded myself that actually it was such a well-worn excuse that it was almost real. I only realised 10 days later the sheer stupidity of what I'd done."
He told BP's chairman that he wished to resign immediately, but was legally forbidden to discuss the case, so couldn't say why, or tell anyone what was happening. He spent the next four months ostensibly preparing to hand over to his successor while secretly battling through the courts to block publication, until eventually the injunction was lifted in May. He resigned within the hour.
Did he have to? No one told him to – and some colleagues urged him not to. Could he have survived the scandal? "I don't know, but I knew I wanted to go. In my own mind I was very clear. There were the two things that were wrong: I lied on the court paper, and the circumstances were going to create a furore. I didn't want to get into the situation where someone was saying, 'When will he go? Resign, resign, resign.'" He has never regretted the decision? "No, absolutely not. I'm very pleased that I took the moment as a full stop. I was ready to change everything."
Seven years on, he still looks stunned by the avalanche of supportive letters and emails that came pouring in, his first intimation that the world might not mind him being gay after all: "It was just amazing." Friends, former colleagues, politicians, journalists and strangers offered support and advice; there were "tragic letters" from men who had been imprisoned for importuning in Hyde Park, and luminaries including Chris Patten, Norman Foster and Lord Puttnam wrote a public letter of support to the Financial Times. "I had no idea they were going to do that," he marvels. "Just extraordinary." He has since encountered a few "tight smiles" from businesspeople who clearly "want to avoid me", but the disapproval he used to dread now barely seems to register. One of the many strangers who wrote to him was a 32-year-old Vietnamese banker. They met for a drink, fell in love, and have been together since. For the very first time, Browne is one half of a public gay couple.
He remains firmly part of the establishment. Ennobled in 2001, he sits as a crossbencher, advises ministers on the appointment of nonexecutives to government departments' boards, and wrote the review of tuition fees that led to their trebling under the coalition. (In fact, Browne recommended going even further and abolishing any cap on fees.) At the same time, he is chairman of Cuadrilla, the shale gas exploration company, and thinks public fears about fracking are a "bit like coming out really, you know, just worst fears. Fears that perhaps don't materialise." There was controversy late last year when he appeared to contradict the government line that fracking would reduce UK energy bills; and, though Cuadrilla has never said it would frack at Balcombe in West Sussex, the scene of fierce protests, the company was given the go-ahead last month to test for oil. So he certainly isn't turning into Peter Tatchell – yet the simple act of coming out has made him feel like a completely different person.
"The transformation was quite extraordinary for me, because I had to confront who I was, and talk about who I was. I'd never done that before – I always talked about myself just as someone who represented a business. And now I have changed."
Lord Browne leaving BP HQ after resigning in May 2007, having admitted he had lied to a court about his private life. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Had we met before May 2007, in what way would he have seemed different? "Well, everybody says I smile a lot more. I used to be more reserved but now I'm relaxed talking about any subject; sexuality is something I'm very happy to talk about any time." He and his boyfriend went whitewater rafting in Patagonia recently, "which was unbelievable for me, wonderful". He'd quite like to get married, but his partner objects that this is too conventional; for now, a wedding remains "a work in progress".
Had Browne's story been unique, he would not have written the book. But the statistics indicated to him that the corporate closet must be crowded. British attitudes towards homosexuality have undergone such a sea change in the past 15 years that in many professions – politics, the media – inclusivity is now taken for granted. The less widely reported, more troubling story Browne decided to tell is how little the corporate world has changed.
Only half of all LGBT employees in the US are estimated to be out at work, and in this country a third are estimated to be in the closet. There is only one openly gay CEO of a FTSE 100, and only one in America's S&P – and these are meant to be two of the world's most progressive countries. Browne is a businessman first and foremost, so he recognises that other professions have changed, but it is industry leaders who, he hopes, will read his book. He was taken aback by the culture of fear and prejudice he uncovered. Interviewees were offered a guarantee of anonymity, and even then closeted businessmen and women told him they were too frightened to talk.
You begin to see why when you read it. In 2011, an American sociologist made fake applications for 1,800 advertised vacancies, submitting two essentially identical applications for each job, except that one mentioned membership of a gay student organisation. Gay applicants turned out to be 40% less likely to get an interview. An entrepreneur in North Carolina created the world's largest retailer of china and crystal, with annual revenues in excess of £80m, but was boycotted and abused by customers and churches when he came out. A 2009 survey asked closeted workers why they didn't come out: because they feared they would be sacked, replied one in five. Yet when prejudice is exposed in high places, there is public outcry: last month Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla Firefox,resigned after it emerged that he had donated to anti-gay rights political movements and users threatened a boycott.
Homophobia isn't just a problem for gay employees, Browne argues – it's a problem for business. He doesn't concern himself with appeals to morality or equality, but instead keeps hammering home his unshakable conviction that firms that allow their staff to be open and honest are more profitable than companies that make gay employees live a lie. Browne used to think he was doing BP a service by staying in the closet. It was only after he came out that he realised what a colossal waste of energy it had been, and how much more of himself could have been devoted to BP had he been able to be open.
In the book, he quotes a gay businesswoman making the case for introducing a non-discrimination policy to cover sexual orientation. "I want you to go back to your offices," she told her heterosexual bosses. "I want you to remove all vestiges of your family, particularly your spouse. Put the pictures in the drawer and take off your wedding band. You cannot talk about your family, and where you were on vacation. And if your spouse or partner is seriously ill, you are afraid to acknowledge the relationship, because you are afraid you might lose your job. Do all of that – and see how productive you are."
With then prime minister Tony Blair and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Photograph: Reuters
In the UK and US, Browne found most leaders professed at once to agree. "It's not often the arguments that are countered; it's the execution that gets messed up. Everyone says, 'Absolutely! That's the right thing to do.' And you say, 'Well, fine, let's do it.' Then nothing happens." More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies, he points out, already have anti-discrimination policies. "So I think we've got to move on from the policy, or philosophy, into, 'How do you get this done?' Business can make it much easier for people to come out, and feel safe to be who they are."
The classic mistake, he says, is to devolve responsibility to an HR department. "HR managers are not CEOs; they're not there to set the tone; the tone has to come from the very top." It's no use simply saying their business is gay-friendly. Chief executives need to give speeches about inclusion, make the diversity officer's role an executive one, create LGBT resource groups and run "allies' programmes", where heterosexual employees sign up to support colleagues who want to come out.
The key, he argues, is to make it easy for gay employees to come out at the beginning of their careers. By the time attitudes in Britain began changing in the 90s, Browne had been living a lie for so long that the deceit itself had become as much of a secret as his sexuality, and the prospect of disclosure even more unthinkable. "You invest in the duplicity to the point where you can't disinvest. You know, it just builds one layer on another and then the time is never right. So how do you back out of it? The answer is, you have to take one step. If in doubt, come out. But come out early, before you've made this investment."
Gay sex between consenting adults is still outlawed in 76 countries. On a recent visit to the Middle East, someone Browne knows well was highly critical of the book. "He said, 'Why did you write this? It's not a good idea because it's nobody's business, and societies are bigger than individuals, and really individuals should keep it to themselves if they don't conform with society.' A fairly classic portrayal, I think," Browne says with a smile, "of society in the Middle East."
He thinks Uganda is probably the worst place in the world to be gay right now, but Iran and Saudi Arabia come a close second, and he is anxious to be clear that he is not encouraging anyone to risk their life or liberty by coming out. "What you cannot do is inadvertently expose one of your employees to danger, to the point where they could die. And business cannot change the law. But I think it can occasionally nudge things along, by demonstrating codes of behaviour, and by giving people a safe place to be themselves."
Had somebody else written The Glass Closet while Browne was still in charge of BP, would it have persuaded him to come out? "Probably not," he admits. "I would probably have said, 'Well, this will be very helpful to others, but doesn't apply to me.' I mean, I wish I'd come out. But I don't think I would have."
Browne seems to be enjoying his new identity as, if not an activist, then perhaps a gay business advocate. He hasn't become a member of the gay glitterati, and I don't see him on a gay pride float with a megaphone any time soon. But he radiates contentment, and thinks if his mother could see him now, it would "take her a little while" to get used to having a gay son, "but she would be happy".
Is there anything about life in the closet that he misses? Browne lets out a great hoot of laughter. "Absolutely nothing, no. I’m just very pleased to be out."
• Decca Aitkenhead spoke to Lord Browne in April 2014.
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