Sunday, June 17, 2018

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A stable lad and an unstable lad

Our week at Bonkers Hall ends with the old boy's unique insight into the events behind A Very English Scandal.

For myself, I am pleased that no one else seems to have used this "a stable lad and an unstable lad" line about Norman Scott.

Sunday

This moving moving-television drama about Jeremy Thorpe has awakened some distressing memories, not least of the fate of poor Rinka whom I always found a Good Girl. I did my best to warn Norman Scott, who was a stable lad and an unstable lad, against taking up with Thorpe, but he was not to be told.

What a dismal crew we were in those days! I turned down both Cyril Smith’s and Clement Freud’s applications to become trustees of the Bonkers’ Home for Well-Behaved Orphans, and subsequent revelations have only confirmed my wisdom in so doing.

Equally, if MPs arranged to have a constituent bumped off every time the casework he, or indeed she, generated became a nuisance, representative democracy would soon grind to a halt. No, with certain notable exceptions that I am too modest to mention, the Liberal Party of the 1970s was not a thing of which one could be proud.

At least the screening of the drama has led to my being asked to give lectures on the period over the summer. I shall be alternating “The Peter Bessell nobody knows” and “Ten fascinating facts about Emlyn Hooson” to audiences in a number of our leading seaside resorts. As seems only proper, I shall be arriving at each by hovercraft.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

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