Jeffrey Bernard

Jeffrey Bernard (May 27, 1932 - September 4, 1997) was a British journalist, best known for his weekly column "Low Life" in the "Spectator" magazine, but also notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abuse. He was immortalised in the play "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell" by Keith Waterhouse.

Life

Born in London, the son of Oliver Percy Bernard and Dora Hodges (1896-1950), an opera singer, he was the brother of Oliver Bernard, a poet, and Bruce Bonus Bernard, an art critic and photographer. Though named Jerry by his parents, at an early age he adopted Jeffrey. He attended Pangbourne Naval College for two years before his parents responded to the college's protest that he was "psychologically unsuitable for public school life".Waterhouse (2004)]

Even while at school, Bernard had begun to explore Soho and Fitzrovia with his brother Bruce. Seduced by the area's lurid and spurious glamour, he took a variety of menial jobs there but still managed to build a circle that embraced Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, John Minton, Nina Hamnett, Daniel Farson and the lowlife of Bohemian London. Elizabeth Smart suggested that he try journalism and he started to write about his interest in horse racing in "Queen" magazine.

His reputation grew and in 1973 he started writing a weekly column for the "New Statesman", being poached by "The Spectator" in 1975. His column was described by Jonathan Meades as a "suicide note in weekly instalments" and principally chronicled, in a "faux-naif" style, his daily round of intoxication and dissipation in The Coach and Horses public house and its fateful consequences. [Bernard (1996) is a collection of his "Low Life" pieces from the "Spectator".] His lifestyle had an inevitable effect on his health and reliability, and the magazine often had to post the notice "Jeffrey Bernard is unwell" in place of his column.

So well known was he that the catch phrase "Jeff bin in?", as used in the "Private Eye" strip cartoon "The Regulars", was recognised as a reference to him by readers.

A recording of him saying "I'm one of the few people who lives what's called the 'Low Life'" was sampled by British band New Order and placed at the start of the track "This Time of Night" on their album "Low-Life". Bernard apparently threatened to sue, leading to the sample being "removed" (by reducing the volume level to almost inaudible). The sample remained, and is quite easily discerned by increasing the volume on a CD of the track.Fact|date=August 2007

Though married four times, he often remarked that alcohol was "the other woman". Hospitalised for detoxification, he suffered from pancreatitis then diabetes. Ultimately his right leg was amputated. He died at his home in Soho of renal failure after voluntarily refusing further treatment by dialysis. He had discussed 'taking himself out' over a period and in his final farewell Spectator column he had discovered how to do that by ingesting bananas, whose potassium content was toxic in his condition.Fact|date=February 2008

References

Bibliography

*Obituaries:
**"The Scotsman", 6 Sept 1997;
**"The Independent", 6 Sept 1997
**"The Times", 8 Sept 1997
**"Daily Telegraph", 8 Sept 1997----
* cite book | author=Bernard, J., with an introduction by Peter O'Toole | title=Reach for the Ground: The Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard | year=1996 | id=ISBN 0-7156-3150-0 | location=London | publisher=Duckworth
* cite book | author=Bernard, O. | title=Getting Over It: Recollections | year=1992 | location=London | publisher=Peter Owen | id=ISBN 0720608651
* cite book | author=Lord, G. | title=Just the One: The Wives and Times of Jeffrey Bernard | year=1993 | location=London | publisher=Headline Book Publishing | edition=New Ed. | id=ISBN 0747242860
*Waterhouse, K. (2004) " [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68104 Bernard, Jeffrey Joseph (1932–1997)] ", "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, accessed 22 August 2007 ODNBsub