Low life
Brought to book
Jeffrey Bernard
Last Monday the noble biographer Graham Lord announced that he had fin- ished the book, to be called Just the One. He has delivered the last three chapters and in about ten days' time we shall be able to see something in print. I look forward to that event with considerable trepidation, as Graham has told me that I won't like the book since so many people have been so bitchy about me. Women mostly, of course, but there are also men like Richard Ingrams who stand in the butts with itchy trigger fingers only too keen to snipe at a man who likes to gargle. That comes as no surprise. He already had a go at me in the television programme The Obituary Show before inviting himself to my birthday lunch party at the Groucho Club, which was a convenient freebie for him.
What did surprise me was to be told by Graham that my third wife, Jill, my daugh- ter's mother, has also had a boil which has been festering for 20 years and he has, it seems, managed to lance that. It puzzles me not a little, then, that she should have invited me out to Majorca to see her last month. Come to think of it, there were a couple of occasions there on which she spoke to me a little in the way in which sergeant-majors address raw recruits. At any minute I thought she might have called me 'you sloppy, dirty little man'.
But I was actually amused to hear that the old Fleet Street virago who, when reviewing these collected columns in the book Low Life, called me 'as beguiling as a Nuremberg rally' has taken a few more pot shots. Anyway, I would far rather be com- pared to a Nuremberg rally than a sum- mer's day. Another woman has said that I ruined her marriage, which is quite simply not true. No woman in her right mind would jeopardise a happy marriage by
going to bed with me, but have any women got a right mind? After 30 years and three large gins she still maintains that I am a shit. Now a shit is somebody who makes trouble and misery with aforethought and intention, whereas my misdeeds are acci- dental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and midnight.
What is amazing is that after ten months of really hard graft — Graham has inter- viewed nearly 100 people and written 400 pages — he is still talking to me. I fear his live-in lady may not be. Oh dear, have I ruined another marriage? Graham has worked like a dog on Just the One and he says the task is likely to turn him into a tee- totaller. Not before the book launch party, hopefully, where I expect to see Richard Ingrams arrive for a free glass of mineral water.
What I shall miss reading are the com- ments some women could have made who flatly refused to talk to Graham. I take it they are simply ashamed and embarrassed to have known me and I on my part am not particularly proud of my past promiscuity, so boo to them. One of them, a well-known actress, could have played the shark in Jaws. She is an absolute ringer. Another, also an actress, has a reputation to protect. So have I, which is why I shall not name her. Oh the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day.
Previous page
