Geoffrey & David pout for slim-hipped Huw Collingbourne

THE AIR is hot and oppressive. Outside the window the streets of Soho swelter in the sultry heat. As I undo another shirt button I can feel little rivulets of sweat trickling down over my body towards dark and uncharted territories.

By contrast, the four elegant youths opposite me are as cool as the chilled white wine which they delicately sip. I decide to keep the tempo way down - I don't feel in the mood to shake it in the Latin groove.   And none of my grooves are in any fit state to have things shaken in them anyway.

I'm racking my brains for some off-beat, probing question to ask these guys -but they look too nice to have any guilty secrets. In desperation I steer the easy course.

MODERN ROMANCE. . . with a name like that just how romantic are they? Geoffrey Deane elegantly uncrosses his legs. He looks across at David Jaymes whose golden blond hair shimmers in the rays of the sun filtering through the Venetian blinds -"We love each other," he says tenderly.

My heart misses a beat. But then I glance again at Geoffrey. Is he being on-the level? Or is he just making the kind of deliberately provocative statement that he thinks I'll never dare repeat in print? David Jaymes, meanwhile, is saying nothing on the matter. Wearing a powder blue suit and an air of cultivated gentility, all he wants to talk about is Style:

"It's how you carry it off. It's the way that you walk. It's the way you do everything. It's the way I'm gesticulating now with my cigarette," he says, gesticulating stylishly with his cigarette.

"Whatever Spandau Ballet haven't got - that's what it is!" Geoffrey adds in his rather more forthright manner.

"Although, wearing pink suits can cause problems," David admits.

"The further North you go the harder it gets," Geoffrey explains, "Because anyone who hasn't got a broken jaw is invariably homosexual as far as they are concerned."

"And there's always one person who'll get jealous because his girlfriend has looked twice at one of the group."

Jealous? But wait a minute . . . if they think you're all gay . . .?

"Well, they all think we're very effeminate, lets put it that way," breaks in duskily goodlooking Andy Kyriacou.

Not that these lads are bothered by what anybody thinks of them - or so they insist.

The people they admire most (apart from one another, that is) are "people with cavalier attitudes - people who will stand out on a limb and say what might be regarded as outrageous things."

Their heroes make a fairly improbable bunch, including Oscar Wilde, Brian Clough and Trevor Howard because when he's on chat shows "he's always outrageously drunk and makes caustic comments."

David and Geoffrey have spent ten happy and productive years together.

Isn't that a little bit like being married to one another? Andy pipes up again in answer to that - "Put it this way - they get jealous if either of them goes out with somebody without the other one!"

"In many ways," says Geoff, "at the risk of incriminating ourselves it is like a marriage. We are very firm friends.

"I think, personally, there is something about male/male friendships that is substantially different from female to female friendships."

And what about them quaint, old-fashioned male/female relationships?

"Oh, we've split up with hosts of girlfriends," Geoff says.

Why all the splitting up? Nothing to do with David and Geoffs' 'Very Special Friendship,' perchance.

"It has caused tensions and problems in the past," David admits cautiously, "but fortunately we've got two very understanding girlfriends . . . "

Sigh . .I can't help it but I really do think all this is ever so heartwarming. Like Courtly Brotherhood and all that - you know, the stuff all those dashing knights of yore went in for in a big way. All that derring-do for dusky maidens one minute - and then off back home to one another the next.

Just as I'm beginning to gurgle sentimentally into my CocaCola, Geoff jolts me back to modern reality and tarnishes my dream of Chivalrous Romance just the teensiest bit...

"We always try and make sure that we have at least one night a week when we go out and get blind drunk and meet anyone and when they ask us what we are we say we're bus drivers or something . . .

Bus drivers? Why bus drivers?

Somehow I just can't bring myself to imagine Sir Galahad trying that one on with the local damsels.