Ok, today I was joined by a long standing friend of mine for breakfast who flew in last night to the UK with her new boyfriend. Now Liv is kinda avant-garde with her outlook to lifestyle and our conversation drifted through many subjects as we nattered away... New boyfriend, Kieran was naturally a bit of a third wheel as Liv and I talked at length. At one point in the conversation Liv mentioned a medical complaint (by it's official name) that Kieran was suffering from...

Now you all know me by now.. I speak as I find. So when I heard that Keiran had been born a haemophiliac (the oldest known hereditary bleeding disorder, basically if you get cut it takes a long time to stop bleeding) I was naturally concerned and engaged him about this in conversation when Liv was being excused. The problem being that I'd was operating under the misapprehension that haemophilia was the occurrence of an intersex anomaly, in other words someone was born with both female and male genitals.. You can understand my mistake. Hermaphrodite sound a bit like haemophiliac, especially with Liv's southern drawl and it being an early hour in the morning.

I turned to Kieran and sympathised with him about how difficult growing up must have been for him... I was shocked when he replied that is wasn't especially hard but he did have to be careful in certain situations... "I'd imagine so!" came my surprised retort. I then went on, as you do, to ask him how his 'disorder' affected Liv and his sex life.. Again I was utterly shocked to hear that "I don't know that you'd even notice it.."

At this point Liv re-enters the room and joins in the conversation. I dig the biggest hole you can imagine for myself over the next ten minutes, with all three of us becoming more and more confused... Until I finally spit out "So on your passport are you classed as a man or a woman, you know.. legally.. where do you stand on that.." Liv asks me what the hell I'm talking about... I answer - He's an haemophiliac.. you know with girl and boy bits...

I'm glad they have a sense of humour... We fell about laughing and I was duly corrected that a hermaphrodite is the one with both sets of bits..

please enjoy my excruciating embarrassment - I know they did