I was sad but unsurprised to hear of the death of the former Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe at 85. He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for so long that he did well to reach such a grand age.
Back when I was a youngish reporter on The Daily Telegraph, Thorpe pre-occupied my life for much of the early part of my 29-year career with that newspaper.
As most people with a grasp of current affairs or British political history will know, he was accused in the late 1970s of conspiracy to murder a former model, Norman Scott, who claimed he and Thorpe had a sexual relationship between 1961 and 1963 at a time when homosexual acts, crazily, were illegal.
Eventually, Thorpe stood trial at the Old Bailey and was cleared. But the affair killed his political career and British public life lost a charismatic if flawed character.
My memory is not always reliable but I remember much of the events of that time. On the day he was charged, I was in Bristol and the procedure was to be done at Minehead, 60 miles or so to the south.
Police officers had tipped off some but not all local reporters in time to be there waiting for it to happen. Although I was perfectly aware something of the sort was about to happen, I was relatively new to the patch and was among the latter category of don't knows. When I finally did hear that I ought to be in another town, I leapt into the car, with a Times reporter by my side, and made the journey at an alarming pace, the blame for any illegality surely resting squarely on PC Plod Press Officer's shoulders.
We made it.
That evening, the press pack ended up in Barnstaple, hub of Thorpe's North Devon constituency. Locals were fiercely defensive of their popular MP and, since elements of the press were partly responsible for the misfortune to befall him, reporters did not receive an especially warm welcome, even from hoteliers about to profit from their presence.
Next day, or perhaps the day after (I decided to write this piece from memory), there was a village fair at which Thorpe was to be guest of honour. Impressively, he fulfilled the engagement and made a witty little speech telling villagers the army of newspaper and radio reporters, photographers and TV crews had come "from far and wide to admire your wonderful produce". Or words very similar.
Later, the focus of attention switched backed to Minehead where committal proceedings were held against Thorpe and his three co-accused, all supposedly involved in a plot to murder Scott and possibly also his dog Rinka.
With the Telegraph's approval, I hired a local magistrate's house, or rather came to an appropriate agreement to reimburse her for the use on each day of the proceedings for writing and, in the old-fashioned way, dictating articles to copytakers in London.
It was widely expected that restrictions would limit the rights of the media to report on the proceedings. The house would not be needed for more than a few days. Even so, most London newspapers sent down a star writer to compose adjective-laden "colour" to be used separately from the journeyman's coverage of the case. The Telegraph's candidate for the colour writing was one R Barry O'Brien, a loud, opinionated but utterly adorable fixture of the newsroom.
When one of Thorpe's co-accused announced at the start of proceedings that he wished to lift the reporting restrictions, there was pandemonium. Instead of a watching brief, collating notes of the evidence for future use, we had a live trial or trial before the trial. I alerted London to this development and my masters immediately dispatched that one-off marvel of Fleet Street's finest days, Guy Rais, to share the reporting duties.
Barry had to muck in, too. Day after day, we would take it in turns to use our single pass into the courtroom press box and rush away with notebooks full of what we'd heard. This all had to be dictated to London. The rota worked fairly well but there was occasional overlap if one of the three reporters had heard a great deal more in his stint than the others and was still on the phone to copytakers when the next man came in to take over.
At the end of each day in court, all three of us would sit around a table in the hotel where Guy and I were staying - Barry had found something grander - to cobble together a concise wrap of the best of the day's evidence. I vividly recall arguing with Barry on one occasion about his proposed introductory paragraph, only to be told: "I've written more intros than you've had hot dinners." He won that argument.
Off-piste, I also recall that my hotel's wine list had a half-bottle of St Emilion that was so good, and so cheap (a bad year, I imagine), that I ended up buying a case to take home. And some Telegraph print workers went on strike, as happened a lot in those days, so that spaces intended to be filled with photographs were blank; I suggested supplying free do-it-yourself pencils with each copy sold, but this suggestion was not taken seriously.
The professional rascal that was Auberon Waugh also covered the hearing, for The Spectator. Part of one column was devoted to his reflections on whether, during the juicier evidence of the alleged Scott-Thorpe affair, there was visible sign of arousal on the part of the predominantly male press box contingent.
This went on for weeks, by which I mean the hearing and not the possible arousal. I'd stay in Minehead from Sunday evening until Friday and have the weekend at home. There was even a Local Footballers vs Press game in which I failed to shine; the hacks lost.
All four were duly committed for trial.
But a general election was called and Thorpe obtained a postponement of the trial start until after polling day. He lost his seat.
I shall never forget being in the kitchen of his home at Cobbaton, six miles from Barnstaple and seven from South Molton, the morning after.
Unusually, he had invited the gathering press pack into his home and was outwardly in fine spirits. I recall starting my story "Beaten but unbowed ..." and with good reason. His trial at the Old Bailey was due to begin soon afterwards and he was adopting a strong stance of expecting justice to prevail with his acquittal.
Never did I truly believe there was a serious plan to murder anyone, Scott, or anything, his dog. It seemed to me that Thorpe's behaviour had not always been above reproach but that he had paid a huge price, losing the leadership of the party and then his parliamentary seat. Add to that being sent to jail would have seemed preposterous. The quality of the prosecution evidence was not up to the standard of hanging a cat.
Despite the magnificent Private Eye satire on the judge's summing up ("and now, members of the jury, you will retire to consider your verdicts of Not Guilty"), anything other than acquittal would have been outrageous.
But in its own cruel way, it was a saga that enriched British political and social life at a time of social, political and industrial turmoil. And I am pleased to have had some small part in it all. Condolences to Thorpe's family.
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