Edwina Currie

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Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie
In office
18 September 1986 – 20 December 1988
Born 13 October 1946 (1946-10-13) (age 61)
Liverpool, England
Political party Conservative

Edwina Currie Jones née Cohen, (born 13 October 1946) is a former British Member of Parliament. She served from 1983 to 1997 as a Conservative Party MP, including three years as Junior Health Minister, before resigning in 1988 because of a controversy over salmonella in eggs.

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[edit] Early life

Currie was born in south Liverpool, England to an Orthodox Jewish family, although she states she is Jewish only culturally and genetically - she does not subscribe to what she calls 'religious mumbo jumbo'.[1] A pupil at Liverpool Institute High School for Girls,[1] she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne's College, Oxford University; subsequently, she took an MA in economic history at the London School of Economics.

[edit] Member of Parliament

From 1975 to 1986, she served as a Birmingham City Councillor for Northfield. In 1983, she stood for parliament as a member of the Conservative Party, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. Frequently outspoken, she was described as "a virtually permanent fixture on the nation's TV screen saying something outrageous about just about anything" and "the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation." [2]

In 1986, she became a Junior Health Minister, but was forced to resign in 1988 after she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs. The claim, that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella" [3] sparked outrage among farmers and egg producers, and caused egg sales in the country to plummet. [4]

This caused particular anger in Northern Ireland where eggs are big business - and at the Christmas party of the Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland that year the featured dish was curried eggs, to the pleasure and amusement of all.

She was, in 1991, the first Conservative MP to appear on the BBC topical panel show Have I Got News For You. Currie subsequently appeared again in a special episode commemorating the release of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs, opposite fellow Liverpudlian (and Liverpool Institute alumnus) Derek Hatton.

After the 1992 General Election, she declined a request from prime minister John Major to take up the position of Minister of State in the Home Office, as it would again have involved serving under Kenneth Clarke, who had been Secretary of State for Health in 1988 and who had just been appointed Home Secretary.[5]

In February 1994, she tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to lower the age of consent for homosexual sex to 16. This amendment was defeated by 307 votes to 280, although a subsequent amendment resulted in the reduction of the homosexual age of consent from twenty one to eighteen; equalisation was achieved some years later.

In June 1994, she contested the European Parliament UK seat of Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, but lost the seat to Labour's Eryl McNally by 94,837 votes to 61,628 votes.

Currie lost her parliamentary seat in the 1997 General Election. For five years (1998–2003), she hosted a late-evening talk show on BBC Radio Five Live, Late Night Currie.

[edit] Personal life

In 1972, Edwina Cohen married accountant Ray Currie in Barnstaple, they had two children and divorced in 1997. On 24 May 2001 she married a second time, to retired detective John Jones in Southwark, whom she had met when he was a guest on her radio programme in 1999.[6]

[edit] Author

Currie is the author of six novels: A Parliamentary Affair (1994), A Woman's Place (1996) She's Leaving Home (1997), The Ambassador (1999), Chasing Men (2000) and This Honourable House (2001). She has also written four works of non-fiction: Life Lines (1989), What Women Want (1990), Three Line Quips (1992) and Diaries 1987–92 (2002), which revealed an affair with former prime minister John Major. She remains an outspoken public figure, with a reputation for being "highly opinionated," [4] and currently earns her living as an author and media personality.

[edit] Media

From the time she lost her seat in 1997, she has maintained a presence in the media. For five years she presented a phone-in programme on BBC Radio Five Live, "Late Night Currie".[7] In 2002 she moved to HTV, presenting the television programme "Currie Night" until 2003. Since then, she has appeared in a string of reality television programmes, such as Wife Swap, in which she and her second husband John swapped places with John McCririck and his wife, Jenny. She has also appeared in the reality cooking show Hell's Kitchen with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes, both in 2006.[8] She won Celebrity Mastermind on 23 June 2004, specialising in "The Life of Marie Curie".

[edit] Charity work

She took part in a sponsored cycle ride across Poland, near to the area where ancestors of hers lived, for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

[edit] Affair with John Major

Currie's Diaries (1987-92), published in 2002, caused a sensation, since they revealed a four-year affair with John Major, starting in 1984 and ending in 1988. The affair began when she was on the backbench, and Major was the government whip under Margaret Thatcher. After Major's rise to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the relationship ended, but the two remained friends. Currie maintains that she ended the affair when it became dangerous and impractical, due to the presence of bodyguards who would need to be avoided. [5]

Major was reportedly "ashamed" of the affair, and had privately revealed its existence to his wife. However, Currie admitted to being "in love" with him for years afterwards. [9] Weeks after revealing the affair, she publicly criticised Major, accusing him of sexism and racism, and being "one of the less competent prime ministers".[10]

The admission came after years of denials of any affair in office, and after writing several novels with raunchy themes, such as A Parliamentary Affair. [4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Blackburne House", Liverpool's Historic Canning area
  2. ^ Assinder, Nick. "Westminster's odd couple", BBC News, September 28, 2002.
  3. ^ "1988: Egg industry fury over salmonella claim", "On This Day," BBC News, December 3, 1988.
  4. ^ a b c "Currie: From Parliament to print", BBC News, September 28, 2002.
  5. ^ a b "Currie interview in full", BBC News, October 2, 2002.
  6. ^ Edwina Currie's web site: Frequently asked questions (1 September 2004). Retrieved on 11 March, 2007.
  7. ^ Broadcasting Career
  8. ^ Edwina Currie's Website
  9. ^ "Major and Currie had four-year affair", BBC News, 28 September 2002.
  10. ^ "Currie blasts Major's record in power", BBC News, 2 October 2002.

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire
1983–1997		 Succeeded by
Mark Todd
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