Clay Aiken thinks jokes about him are “funny” “half the time,” but gay questions are “insulting”

Clay Aiken has a sense of humor about the jokes that often make him their target. And they’re not all that unfamiliar. “I spent years and years in middle school getting picked on, so I’m kind of used it,” he tells The Calgary Sun. “First of all, I usually don’t watch (the talk shows) and someone else will tell me about them. And, heck, half the time, I think it’s funny.”

He also says that when people ask him about his sexual orientation, it’s “insulting.” Jokes about him being gay are “just as insulting as when someone like you interviews me and asks a question like that, no matter how you word it,” he says. But he’s also resigned himself to the insults: “It’s part of the game. You just do it.”

His second CD should be out next spring, he says; Clay is presently “working with Canadian producer Jaymes Foster Levy” on it, the Sun reports.