A Parliamentary Affair by Edwina Currie a Parliamentary Affair by Edwina Currie
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Parliamentary Affair by Edwina Currie A Parliamentary Affair by Edwina Currie. The former health minister was until now best known for her 1988 declaration that most of Britain's egg production was infected with salmonella. The ensuing row eventually triggered her own resignation. Nine years later she lost her seat in Parliament and the outspoken Liverpudlian turned to writing. Her first novel, ironically entitled A Parliamentary Affair - a passionate tale of love and betrayal behind the scenes at Westminster - went straight into the best-seller lists in 1994. On her own website she says the best advice she had when becoming an author was "Write what you know". But despite the raunchy themes of novels, she had always denied having an affair while in office. Now it seems her soon to be published diaries, which detail her liaison with Mr Major, will also fly off the shelves. Mrs Currie began her working life as a teacher of economics and economic history after graduating from Oxford and London Universities. She was also a tutor and lecturer for the Open University. She started her political life in 1975 when she became a Birmingham City Councillor and chairman of Central Birmingham Health Authority. She was elected to Parliament in 1983 where her public profile rose rapidly, thanks in no small part to her highly-opinionated persona. From 1985-86 she was parliamentary private secretary to Sir Keith Joseph, at the Department of Education and Science. But it was during the period from 1986-1988 as a minister at the DHSS (later the Department of Health) when she unwittingly rose to fame. She had already caused a storm talking of the eating habits of northerners, and appeared on TV at the start of the Aids scare, demonstrating how to put on a condom. But her comments that most of the country's eggs contained the salmonella bacteria caused a storm. When egg sales plummeted Mrs Currie was forced to resign. Twenty-two years of public service later ended in 1997, when Mrs Currie lost her seat at the general election. But having made her name, Mrs Currie ensured she remained in the public eye. She turned her hand to writing and to date has penned six books, including the best-seller A Parliamentary Affair, published in 1994. She also embarked on a career in broadcasting and currently fronts the popular Late Night Currie phone-in show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Her broadcasting career also includes LBC and standing in for Jimmy Young on BBC Radio 2 as well as television presenter roles. She formally separated from her first husband, Ray, in 1997 and married her second husband, John Jones, a retired detective, in 1999. Why we should have noticed Edwina Currie's mentionitis. Can we now drop the plaintive mantra that the private lives of politicians do not matter? What if John Major's burning secret, known only to Edwina Currie and a sheepish Tony Newton, had been a duplicity over Maastricht? Would Mrs Currie's diaries have been described as a publishing sensation? Would the Daily Mirror have written with such fury that "The Major Scandal is Hypocrisy"? The only kind of hypocrisy in which people are interested is sexual. The Times was yesterday frantically trying to attribute political gravitas to Mrs Currie's revelations. "The focus on one particularly revelatory fact, Mrs Currie's affair with John Major, has naturally distracted attention from the diary's value as an individual's record of her time in Parliament." The playing down of the "one particularly revelatory fact" does a disservice to Mrs Currie. It is what has been driving her crazy for all these years. A well-known affliction experienced by people having affairs is "mentionitis". They cannot confess, but they drop clues like a nervous tic, usually in the form of banal and irrelevant references to their lover. "Mr Jones says that France is the best place to go on holiday. Mr Jones has taken up jogging!" And so on. Edwina's romantic novel A Parliamentary Affair was mentionitis on a grand scale. The poor woman was bursting to tell. The journalist Mary Riddell remembers interviewing Mrs Currie about her novel. Mrs Currie said, unprompted, that she had given a copy of it to John Major, who told her: "Oh, it's very good. Norma and I are reading it in bed and we're fighting over it." Mrs Currie spoke the pure truth. Since Norma allegedly knew about the affair by this time, of course she would have wanted to read the book. The only thing missing in this excellent report of Mr Major's reaction was the tone, which was presumably bitterly sarcastic. There is no doubt that the Currie-Major affair is the most shameful event in all our journalistic lives. What more did Edwina have to do to get it into print? Hire a hot-air balloon with a banner? For all these years, we have spurned Edwina for the same reasons that Major finally turned his back on her. Because she is a publicity-mad nuisance. With hindsight, I can see the whole treasure hunt. For instance, a sociable male Tory once told me en passant over lunch that John Major was spectacularly endowed. Not wishing to appear gauche, I merely nodded reflectively and we moved on to ERM, but now I shudder over the lapse of journalism. How did he know? Who told him? One can only speculate on Edwina Currie's motives for revealing the affair now. Of course, a new conservatory is nice. But more than that I suspect it was a need for recognition. Excluded from the index of John Major's autobiography, she decided to publish her own footnote. If she had been absolutely vindictive, she would have released this information when it could destroy Major, rather than embarrass him. It is a cry from the wilderness: "Yoo-hoo, I'm still here." I keep thinking of Mrs Currie's graveyard weekend radio slot, from 10pm to 1am. For all we know, she has been gabbling about strawberries and cream for months, but there was no one out there to hear her. Mrs Currie claims that she enjoyed the secrecy of her affair with Major, that she relished her colleagues' obtuseness. She must be insulted to learn that it was not the couple's Machiavellian qualities that shielded them from suspicion, but the ludicrousness of the proposition. The union has made anything possible. The Telegraph's managing director, Jeremy Deedes, says that he fleetingly misheard a discussion on the radio and thought Major had had an affair with Mrs Thatcher. John Major's sister, Pat Dessoy, commented jovially yesterday: "At least it wasn't Ann Widdecombe." Who benefits and who loses as a result of this one particularly revelatory fact? Reactions have been illuminating. From the start, a Westminster boys-will-be-boys line got under way. Late nights, burning ambition, intolerable pressure, part of the job, etc. This argument is gently chiding of Norma, whose absence exposed her husband to temptation. Why couldn't he just curl up with a good book? The alternative defence of Major - an attack on Edwina Currie - is now prevailing and repellent. Edwina has been described as vain, trashy and publicity-seeking. All these adjectives are true, but the motive for saying it is ugly. The vulgar abuse of Edwina Currie sounds like a howl of pain from the gentleman's clubs. Mary Archer confirmed her honorary man status by echoing the supercilious disdain for Major's "taste". Well, first, we take our pleasures where we can. John Major was perhaps not offered Nicole Kidman. Richard Desmond, the Express owner, made his fortune by injecting realism into pornography. Male readers understood that the drawback of goddesses is that they are not readily available. Second, the "poor taste" response betrays a moral relativism. Is it OK for a married man to have an affair so long as his lover is pretty enough to make it worthwhile? This moral criterion of Pop Idol was last applied to Camilla Parker Bowles. The question to ask an adulterer is "Is it right?", not "Is she fit?" The criticism of Mrs Currie sank to a new low yesterday with the pantomimic entrance of David Mellor, himself a male version of Edwina Currie. "She's just a cheap trollop," he blustered. Really, the political sink overflows with pots and kettles. Meanwhile, Edwina Currie continued her valuable record of her time in Parliament yesterday with detailed accounts of her snoring, golf-loving, underpaid, under-achieving former husband, Ray. Today, The Times offers further parliamentary insights: "Eggs and a Cuddle", "He Started to Touch But I Couldn't Cope" etc. One satisfying effect of this particularly revelatory fact has been the sight of serious political commentators rushing to re-evaluate the term of John Major. All of Westminster's worldliness could not bury this story. The editor of The Times, who arrived in his job preaching geopolitics and conceptual journalism, has now been converted to a simpler truth. Judge a man by how he treats his wife. Private Lives Matter. PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS. "THERE'S a wonderful line at the end of one of Travolta films Saturday Night Fever I think when he says, `I am an able person'. And I thought, yes. I am an able person. I can do other things. John Travolta is not a usual source for politicians' quotes. (Few of them, indeed, could do the accent). But then Edwina Currie is not your usual sort of politician.