Something I hadn’t realised about the whole Scott thing. I was just about reading Private Eye while the trial was going on but they’ve always been a bit cryptic. You need to have a reasonable background knowledge of the scene before you can get what they’re writing about in any particular week.
I was, and in fact was until this morning, under the impression that the trial in the late 70s was all about stuff that had taken place in the mid 70s. Not so. The “affair” was in the early 60s and Scott had been dogging (not, perhaps, le mot juste here) Thorpe ever since. In fact, living off him through a series of payments that could, if you squint, be thought of as payments to not tell. We have a word for that although it escapes me at present.
No real point here, I just didn’t know that.
The trial was over a bungled murder attempt, wasn’t it? The victim had been known to Thorpe for years, as you say.
Makes the current crop of Liberals seem amateurish.
I wonder if anything new will be printed now he’s dead and can’t sue for libel. But it seems Norman Scott is still alive, so perhaps not yet.
The full story is unlikely to emerge because three significant figures — Peter Bessell, Emlyn Hooson and Andrew Newton* — are dead and do not appear to have written diaries of the events.
*who lived across the road from my family at the time, although we didn’t know UK’s Jackal was a neighbour.
I’m too young to remember the original brou-haha but old enough to remember the spoof “Vote Liberal or we’ll shoot your dog” campaign slogans.
Charlieman, Wikipedia says Hooson died in 2012 and Bessel in 1985. The Telegraph says Newton died in 2004. Scott now seems to be the only one still alive.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/11274214/Jeremy-Thorpe-scandal-where-are-they-now.html
Richard, I’m presuming that Norman Scott didn’t know that he was in peril. Whatever he thinks isn’t necessarily pertinent.
Bessell, Hooson and Newton knew what was going on. They never told us what happened.
“Entirely a matter for you”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xi-agPf95M
It made me think of another OG, Tim, Auberon Waugh who stood as the Dog Lover’s[sic] Party candidate.