Stan Lee appeared on his origin of Spider-Man story down pat. And you can hear him recite it to BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme this morning to promote his graphic memoir by Peter David and Colleen Doran.

No, no mention of Steve Ditko, obviously.

But he was also asked about Iceman being outed as gay recently in the All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men comics. And it came as quite a surprise.

"The fact you're telling me that is the first I'd heard of… is Iceman really gay?"

"I wasn't involved in that, that may have been after I stopped writing the books. I didn't really have any gay characters. If they were gay I didn't play up to the fact that they were gay. I wasn't aware of my characters sexual proclivities."

Which isn't exactly true, I mean Reed Richards and Sue Storm had Franklin on his watch…

"This is the first time I've learned that Iceman is gay, wow, I never knew that."

Stan Lee says that he tries not to think about not getting royalties on the movies. "I came into the field too soon and I was too young."

You can hear the full programme here, Stan Lee comes in around the 2:25 mark