Low life
Outed at last
Jeffrey Bernard
First the biography, now the backlash. Last week I received my first bound copy of Just the One, a presentable-looking book and one whose subject I thought I knew rather well, but I had thankfully almost for- gotten the plot and found the reminder not a little depressing. I took to my bed to read it carefully, or I read it first and then took to my bed, I can't remember. But after a little less than a hundred pages my fears that it had been a mistake to allow Graham Lord to write it were confirmed.
Although I am morbidly inclined, I have never had any desire to see a post-mortem. They saw the top off the head of the corpse. I suppose I was childishly flattered when Lord suggested he write it. I was cer- tainly vain enough to invite him to the pri- vate view. When I moaned why, oh why did I allow it, my brother Bruce hit the nail on the head when he said, 'After the play, Jef- frey Bernard is Unwell, faded away, you were in need of another fix.' I must kick the habit. And that shouldn't be difficult because it is extremely unlikely that I will meet any more pushers like Keith Water- house or Graham Lord.
Since the play took off three years ago I suppose I have been experiencing a certain amount of what must be described as hap- piness. I never thought that it would incur so much resentment from some friends, acquaintances and colleagues. People don't like you to fly out of the pigeonholes they have put you in. And some of them have strange memories.Trivial inaccuracies can be infuriating — or perhaps they are not trivial. For example, Robert Hunt, who I have known and thought a friend since 1949, says that when I was boxing he saw me fight three times and on each occasion I was knocked out. Fact: he never saw me fight and I have never been knocked out. Stopped, out on my feet, but never KO'd. So what? So it bloody well annoys me. An ex-lover, Marsh Dunbar, says I was and am a shit. That is a much misused word. A fool, feckless and selfish, but not a shit, which requires intention and forethought.
Then the rumblings of the backlash to come arrived in the 'Londoner's Diary' of the Standard which was just plain vicious and nasty and followed it up by saying that Jill Neville is the mother of my daughter, Isabel. And too much has been written about the possibility of my having been homosexual in earlier days. What a load of aggravation that could have saved. Sally Vincent is quoted as saying, 'I don't think he was averse to selling his arse a bit.' I was, of course, merely a cock-teaser who took drinks and meals from homosexuals who could afford to buy them. The Vincent remark is a sort of hate possibly generated by the rarity of her catching sight of her byline. Spare me blind judges. And Graham Lord surprised me a little by saying that I deserved the sack from the Sunday Mirror. Not a nice word, 'deserved', and for what? Taking two weeks' unpaid holiday after about six years. Anyway, I am not so daft as to have expected that all the people Lord interviewed for the book would have basted him with honey-coated tongues, but I have had moments of sobri- ety when I have helped young and old ladies cross the street and helped the odd friend to a drink. Somewhere it is written that I have been too mean to buy a round of drinks and that might come as a surprise to the staff of any of the bars I use. And now, so as not to disappoint readers of this column and Lord's biography, I must get paralytically drunk, go out and vomit over the Queen Mother, beat up a couple of women, lose my money to the bookmakers and then attempt suicide with a little more luck than I have had in the past.
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