Major lived in constant fear of day that Edwina would tell of secret affair FINAL Edition

The journalistic operation which saw Mrs [Edwina Currie] break her silence would have made the British military proud. Normally, serialisations in newspapers are organised months in advance, but to ensure maximum secrecy, publishers Little Brown only contacted The Times four weeks ago. The newspaper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland : Daily)
Main Author JASON BEATTIE and ALISON CHIESA
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Edinburgh (UK) Scotsman Publications 30.09.2002
Subjects
Currie, Edwina
Heseltine, Michael
Latimer, Clare
Major, John
Thatcher, Margaret H
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Summary:The journalistic operation which saw Mrs [Edwina Currie] break her silence would have made the British military proud. Normally, serialisations in newspapers are organised months in advance, but to ensure maximum secrecy, publishers Little Brown only contacted The Times four weeks ago. The newspaper immediately set about repeating the successful procedure used when Michael Portillo decided to reveal his "homosexual experiences". As with Portillo, the writer Ginny Dougary was secretly despatched to interview Currie in preparation for the scoop. But Times editor Robert Thomson had another ruse up his sleeve. In order to avoid the story being copied by the London nationals in their later editions, he ordered a dummy first edition with a different front page story and the Dougary interview replaced by a two-page advertisement for Curry's electrical store. Thomson loved the joke. There were fewer female MPs than in the days of [Tony Blair]'s Babes, and as Mrs Currie recalled: "What happened when I first arrived was that I found myself isolated, very lonely and treated like a freak. I was constantly having to justify myself to idiots who had one third of my brains and experience. But [John Major] was, John understood."
ISSN:0307-5850