The Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik’s closest friends worried that he had fallen into a deep depression or was gay and unable to accept it when he cut off all social relations and moved in with his mother, a court in Oslo heard yesterday.

Two of Breivik’s close friends gave evidence overnight in a separate room to Breivik, who is on trial for murdering 77 people in terrorist attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utoya last year.

One friend said he had long wondered about the 33-year-old extremist’s sexuality because he was slightly feminine and fastidious about his appearance. The friend said Breivik had a nose job, supposedly to make himself look more “Aryan’.

“He was very vain. He was very focused on his looks. He could be a bit feminine in his way of being.u00a0“He explained that as being metrosexual, that was the new trend. He made reference to David Beckham at the time,” he said.

Another friend said Breivik became extremely preoccupied with immigration after 2006 and it became impossible to talk to him without him bringing up politics.

He became increasingly obsessed with computer games and moved to his mother’s house to play the online game World of Warcraft full-time for a year.

There, he developed an unusually close relationship with his mother and became reclusive, at which point his friends became worried that he was depressed about being gay.u00a0The trial is expected to last until the end of June.