Friday, May 16, 2025

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: I watched Sir Edward Heath being hunted through the lobbies by a full pack of beagles

Lord Bonkers mentioned the other day that my rent falls due on Lady Day. I took this as a subtle reminder that it's a long time since I looked to see what the old brute was saying 30 years ago.

So here's an entry from his diary in Liberator 227 (March 1995), when John Major was fighting the bastards of Euroscepticism - he now seems a giant in comparison to the Tory leaders who were to come after him:

The Palace of Westminster is not a happy place at present. One can hardly enter the gentlemen's lavatory without seeing a gang of Europhobes forcing some poor moderate Conservative's head down the pan and pulling the chain, and this morning I watched Sir Edward Heath being hunted through the lobbies by a full pack of beagles. 

The problem, I would argue, lies in a lack of leadership at the very top of the Conservative Party. This little grey chap they have nowadays may be very good when it comes to traffic cones and motorway service stations, but he is not the sort one would readily follow into battle. It is all too reminiscent of Woolacombe in 1968, when Jeremy Thorpe had to be rescued after he was pushed through a trap door and imprisoned under the stage by the Young Liberals.

I also enjoyed a detail from his visit to Wales, where he passes and enjoyable evening at a village whose name, he is informed, is best translated as: 

The Church of St Mary in the hollow by the pool where Lloyd George seduced Bronwyn - you know, the big girl who used to work in the Co-op.

It doesn't go back quite this far, but there's a free archive of back numbers of Liberator on the magazine's website.

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