Amid all the brouhaha surrounding the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death, another 10th anniversary has gone unnoticed. A few days after Diana's death in August 1997, the bohemian Soho writer Jeffrey Bernard died after being unwell for many years, writes Paul Clements.
Since the mid-1970s Bernard had written a column for the Spectator entitled "Low Life", memorably described as "a suicide note in weekly instalments". He became a cult figure because of his boozing, gambling and womanising, all of which he chronicled in colourful detail. To say he was fond of a drink is an understatement. His day typically started at 11am with a few double vodkas and was punctuated by 50 cigarettes.
When his column didn't appear, as happened occasionally an apologetic line was printed explaining: "Jeffrey Bernard is unwell". In 1989 this became the title of a West End play that played to full houses for more than a year and had a run in Dublin as well. Peter O'Toole brilliantly played the part of Bernard; he was an ideal interpreter, having shared some of the experiences with his subject.
Soho was Bernard's "university" and the main source of his material. The pubs, clubs and cafés of Dean Street, Old Compton Street and Greek Street, with their cast of eccentric characters, were his stamping ground. His "office" was the Coach and Horses pub, with its cantankerous landlord Norman Balon. His drinking buddies included Dylan Thomas, Lucian Freud, Louis MacNeice, Graham Greene and Francis Bacon. To this day his memory lives on in the Coach with framed "Jeff Bin In?" cartoons and photographs of him adorning the walls.
In total he wrote more than 1,000 columns. His themes were drink, horse-racing, drink, moaning about a lack of money, drink, and moaning about women; he had four wives, so there was no shortage of material. He was constantly falling in love and had pet names for his wives. "She Who Would Drown In My Eyes" was one; another, somewhat less romantically, was "She Who Would Iron 14 Shirts".
His writing was characterised by a sharp and sympathetic eye, not just for the physical detail, but for absurdity and pretension. His columns have been collected in several anthologies and are by turns incisive, funny, sardonic and poignant. He wrote honestly and eloquently, sometimes embarrassingly, about the wreckage of his personal life; his talent was translating this into laughter. On one occasion he wrote to the New Statesman to say he had been asked to write his autobiography and wondered if anyone could tell him what he had been doing between 1960 and 1974.
Although his death was overshadowed by the coverage of Diana's car crash, the obituary writers in the English daily press gave him a generous and mostly eulogistic send-off. The Guardian said his attitude to women was very bad, yet they were devoted to him. Irma Kurtz said he had a charming smile "like a little devil caught out in a good deed".
Keith Waterhouse, who wrote the play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, paid a well-rounded tribute: "He could be cruel, unpardonably rude and churlish. . . but he was never a bore, and he had wit, he had style and he had charm. He was an unreformed, unrepentant reprobate, going to hell his own way and in his own good time. He will be talked about as long as Soho lasts."
Bernard also took an interest in how his own passing would be marked, leaving his version of his life, based on a spoof obituary, published in the Daily Telegraph:
"His drinking began to escalate to such an extent that he was unable to hold down the most ordinary job and he was consequently advised to take up journalism. Thinking that geographical changes would solve his problems he moved to various 'dream' cottages in the country. Unfortunately he was always drunk there too."
As long ago as 1965 he was diagnosed with pancreatitis and was given only a few years to live. But he confounded doctors and friends by drinking heavily and chain-smoking for the next 25 years.
In a reflective article on his alcoholism he wrote: "If I had all the money I've spent on drink - I'd spend it all on drink."
Towards the end of his life he had a leg amputated. Thereafter he could make sorties to his Soho watering-holes only when someone offered to push his wheelchair. Then kidney-failure confined him to hospital. During his last year his column, written from his hospital bed, was filled with battles with doctors and nurses. One of his many doctors once brought a group of students to his hospital bedside and declared: "This, gentlemen, is Mr Jeffrey Bernard, who closes his veins with 60 cigarettes a day and then opens them up again with a bottle of vodka."
On September 4th, 1997, drinking-up time was finally over for him. For 21 years he had contributed (most weeks) 600 words of melancholy humour and self-pity to the Spectator, which prosaically recorded his death by saying: "Jeffrey Bernard is not writing this week".
A diarist par excellence, he has been compared to Pepys and Boswell. His large and dedicated following of readers mourned his death, but celebrated the life of a caustic observer and one of Britain's great humorists.
Ten years on, his friends will raise a glass to his memory, quoting his immortal words: "I only drink to make other people interesting."