It's a terrible thing to live in fear.

So said Ellis Redding as played by Morgan Freeman in the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'.

Now, leaving aside the fact that 'The Shawshank' managed to cram almost every known cliché of prison life into its admittedly fairly long duration - ruthless and corrupt prison guards and governor, an elderly inmate befriending a small bird and ultimately, a wrongly accused con tunnelling out to freedom, I wholeheartedly agree with Ellis on that one point.

It is a terrible thing to live in fear.

Fear, however, takes many forms.

For instance, fear isn't just about being scared about what's going to happen. It partly is - being too afraid to take a few risks doesn't usually help you achieve much apart from a load of lost opportunities and an old age riddled with 'what could have beens'.

And of course, it goes without saying that a life spent in fear of your personal, physical or emotional safety being compromised is a personal tragedy that, sadly, all too many people worldwide, young and old - have to deal with every minute of their being.

The other kind of fear however is one that loads of folk would never admit to possessing.

Fear of the unknown, of people who are different, who come from different places and lead lives which appear, from the outside at least, to be very different from the ones we consider to be normal and mainstream.

(It's amazing what you can do with words. Normal and mainstream being of course, other words for 'boring'.)

But then fear is sometimes called something else too. A harsher and much more pejorative term - prejudice.

Prejudice is usually defined as - at best - a lack of tolerance for someone else's beliefs and lifestyle, religion and/or sexual persuasion.

I'd like to think that in the latter case at least, this particular type of prejudice - fear basically, let's face it - has dissipated in recent times.

After all, everybody's tolerant now, aren't they? Aren't they?

Think about it - can you imagine a gay person being accepted in Government for example - as recently as the 1980's? An openly gay person, I mean.

In those days all that sort of stuff was doubtless going on - was definitely going on - but it was cloaked in mystery, guilt and nudge-nudge laddish derision.

Not like these days when it's all out in the open, eh?

Ah but hang on. Can it really be true that there isn't a single gay footballer in the top echelons of the British game?

Or is it much more likely that he - or a statistically certain they - don't feel inclined to reveal their orientation to the world for the simple reason that any efforts to live a normal life - well as normal as a top player's life ever is - would be hopelessly overshadowed by innuendo, crowd (and probably colleague) ridicule and comprehensive disrespect.

Recently here in Australia, a well-known Aussie Rules Football commentator was taken to task for branding a player 'a big p*****h'.

As an off-the-cuff remark uttered on live TV, it unleashed a bit of a storm, as you might expect in these marginally more enlightened times, but the thing that truly surprised me was the commentator - let's name him - Brian Taylor's 'punishment'.

The sack? Nah.

Suspension? Uh-uh.

He was offered - and apparently received - counselling.

Now, while I don't personally believe in giving someone their jotters for indulging in the sort of blokey prejudice you can still habitually overhear in every pub from Melbourne to Motherwell on any given Saturday afternoon - every minute of any given day probably - I fail to see what counselling is going to achieve.

'So Brian, when you called him a big p*****h did you really think of the inherent implications?'

'No of course not. I didn't mean to say he fancied other blokes. I just meant he was a big soft Jessie Biscuit who should be carrying a handbag. I wasn't trying to be offensive or anything'.

Predictably Brian himself has spoken of the positive effect of the counselling session - the major one being that it kept him in a job presumably - but it does make you think of what would have been a suitable penance.

Holding the hapless Brian up to sustained ridicule from every section of Aussie society would be my personal choice. Sustained, prolonged and unremitting.

Sadly, this doesn't appear to have happened. And no doubt, he'll now hold his tongue in similar times in the future, not because he's learned anything about being unenlightened or causing offence or being blatantly prejudiced but simply because he's scared.

Of losing his job?

For sure.

But you know what?

I have a feeling that's not the only thing the not very bold Brian is afraid of.