12 saturday review Saturday April 9 2022 | the times
a spell of psychiat-
ric care and some
drugged, chaotic
escapades in Ox-
ford, Scott duly
toddles off to
Westminster with
his Jack Russell,
Mrs Tish.
Again, the
scene is presented
in vivid detail, a
dynamic Thorpe sweeping Scott and Mrs
Tish off their paws, promising to solve all
those pesky national insurance card prob-
lems. To have such lucid recollection of
this and subsequent events de-
spite gobbling industrial
quantities of Largactil,
Tuinal, Librium, Anta-
buse, Mogadon and
gin is a medical and
literary miracle.
Another of Scott’s
weaknesses was
for the vichyssoise
at the Reform
Club, where
Thorpe dined him
on “many” occasions.
Far-fetched as much
of it reads — I believed
about half of it — the story
is a romp, acquiring a mesmer-ic impetus as Scott’s life staggers from one
mishap to the next. He is ravished by
Thorpe for the first time when they stay at
the house of his mother, Ursula, a bullet-
proof Mary Whitehouse lookalike who
quickly sniffs out Scott as trouble. The act
of penetration (in those days still illegal) is
so violent, with Scott biting the pillow in ag-
onised silence, that Mrs Tish cowers in a
corner. Thorpe, one of life’s five-times-a-
night men, calls Scott “poor frightened rab-
bit”. Was it sadism that drove the Liberal
politician or a “reckless daredevil” lust for
danger? One day he pushes Scott into the
bushes of the garden of Selwyn Lloyd, the
chancellor, near the Mall for a quick grope.
Names are dropped. Scott
meets Lord Reith, the
Earl of Snowdon, the
heir to the Guinness
fortune Tara Browne,
“the internationally
famous interior de-
signer David Mlin-
aric”, “the world-
famous prima bal-
lerina Margot
Fonteyn” and Lady
Longford. “We
would discourse on
all manner of subjects,”
Scott writes, his prose
suddenly strangulated by
grandeur.books
Quentin Letts enjoys
an extraordinary
account of the Jeremy
Thorpe affair from
the ‘disaster magnet’
Norman Scott
T
en years ago it was the Profumo
case. Today’s hot retro scandal is
the Jeremy Thorpe trial: sex,
politics, Sunbeam Rapiers and a
pinstriped establishment react-
ing badly to gossipy lovers. With most of
the tragic farceurs safely dead, this can
now be dished up without fear of libel.
John Preston did well from his history-
novel hybrid A Very English Scandal, which
became a BBC TV drama. Michael Bloch
produced a more authoritative biography
of the former leader of the Liberal Party.
Now Norman Scott, the stablehand and
male model who was Thorpe’s Adonis
and whose Great Dane Rinka was killed
on Exmoor by a bungling assassin, has
produced his memoirs. Norman’s Gloria
Gaynor moment has arrived. What took
him so long?
The book is subtitled How I Dodged a
Bullet, Spoke Truth to Power and Lived to
Tell the Tale. People who boast about
speaking truth to power are often self-
promoting obsessives. At the end of
Thorpe’s 1979 trial for incitement to
murder him, Scott was described by the
judge, Mr Justice Cantley, as “a hysterical,
warped personality, a fraud, sponger,
whiner, parasite — but, of course, he could
be telling the truth”. By the wonders of
British justice, whose blindness must be a
source of pride to us all, Thorpe was
acquitted. This book allows us to consider
whether or not that old buzzard of a judge
was on to something.
Scott, an illegitimate child, was born
Josiffe, in Sidcup, in 1940 but dropped the
surname after Thorpe told him it sounded
Jewish. When he was four his mother
would hold him face down, pull down his
pants and push her finger roughly inside
him — “The abuse continued for several
years.” Ten years later he ran into trouble
for pinching a bale of clover hay for his
horse Listowel. His mother went to the
magistrate’s court in a black astrakhan
coat, accompanied by her friend, the singer
Dorothy Squires. She disowned him, so the
boy was sent to a remand centre. Listowel
was returned to the Blue Cross, never to be
seen again.
Scott, leaving school at 15, hoped to join
the House-
hold Cavalry.
It turned him
down owing to
“a foot injury”.
He worked in-
stead at vari-
ous stables as
a groom and
riding instruc-
tor, never stay-
ing long in any
job. He lost
his virginity to
a girl called
Geraldine but
attracted ad-
vances from
men. These
“shocked and
disgusted” him.
Dressage, not
undressage,
was his thing
and he went
to work for a
three-day event
rider, the Hon Brecht Van de Vater. Scott
gave Vater his national insurance cards,
which proved entitlement to benefits. He
never saw them again.
You and I, without a diary, might find it
hard to recall events from half a century
ago. Scott seems blessed with a cinematic
memory. At times Preston might almost be
acting as his ghostwriter. One evening in
1961 a black Sunbeam arrives containing a
lean, dapper, slightly sinister figure in
homburg hat and black coat with fur collar.
Astrakhan strikes again. The man in black
is Thorpe, then a young Liberal MP
for North Devon. He and Vater share a
single bed, something that puzzles our
innocent hero.
Nor does Scott smell a rat when Thorpe
chats him up at the stable door and urges
him to make contact if things ever go
wrong with Vater. Some months later, afterBook of the week
An Accidental
Icon
How I Dodged a
Bullet, Spoke Truth
to Power and Lived
to Tell the Tale
by Norman ScottHodder & Stoughton,
328pp; £22A I H B t t b H 3
ALAMYThe story has more
holes than a string
vest. And yet it is
strangely gripping
The ‘sponger
and whiner’
gives his side
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Norman Scott. Above:
Jeremy Thorpe. Right:
Ben Whishaw as Scott in
A Very English Scandal