This is the reply Bryan Gould sent when asked to be an honorary vice-president of the Paedophile Information Exchange in 1977:

"Thank you for your letter and for your invitation to become an honorary vice-president. I am afraid that I have so much on my plate at the moment that it would be unwise of me to take on any further responsibilities for the time being. I should be less than honest with you however if I were to give you the impression that lack of time is my only difficulty. As you say yours is an unpopular cause and whilst I have a good deal of sympathy for your objectives, I do not think it would be fair to my wife and family for me to take a public stand on it. They suffered somewhat as a result of me speech to CHE and while I am robust enough to take the comments, correspondence etc., my wife in particular reacts badly to it. I am sorry to have to send you such a disappointing reply."

Mr Gould told us today told us that he didn't remember the correspondence and asked us to make clear that he has never had the slightest sympathy for paedophilies or any involvement with the Paedophile Information Exchange. He told us that "whereas today I would have rejected any contact with them at all. In the climate of the opinion of those days, with so little known about paedophilia, I gave them a polite reply."

Listen to the full report on #wato here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01t01rb

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