Jeffrey Bernard
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Jeffrey Bernard (May 27, 1932 - September 4, 1997) was a British journalist, notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abuse. He was immortalised in a play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse.
Born in London, the son of Oliver Percy Bernard and Dora Hodges (1896-1950), an opera singer, he was the brother of Bruce Bonus Bernard. 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".
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 installments" and principally chronicled, in a faux-naive style, his daily round of intoxication and dissipation in The Coach and Horses public house and its fateful consequences. 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 "Jeffbinin", as used in the Private Eye strip cartoon, The Regulars, was instantly recognised as a reference to him by readers all over the country, not just in London.
A sample 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 pressing of the track.
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 home in Soho of renal failure after voluntarily refusing further treatment by dialysis.
