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Posted on 10/02/2002 8:08:37 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Politician-turned-author Edwina Currie, pouring scorn on her contrite ex-lover, accused John Major on Wednesday of behaving "atrociously" for saying he was ashamed of the four-year affair they had before he became Britain's prime minister.
Far from wanting to end the liaison, Currie said in her first interview since publication of her bombshell dairies, Major lured her into his private office and tried to seduce her over a glass of tomato juice within weeks after she had decided to call it quits.
Her remarks on British Broadcasting Corp. radio sounded the opening volley of a trans-Atlantic battle between the ex-lovers in what has become Britain's scandal of the year, despite the fact that it ended 14 years ago. Major on Wednesday was on a visit to Texas.
The pair had their affair between 1984 and 1988, when she was a junior health minister and he was in the whips' office. She said in her diaries that she called a halt when Major began his climb up the political power pole, eventually to take over as prime minister when Margaret Thatcher was deposed by the Conservative Party.
The relationship started "because we were healthy, handsome people in very pressurized jobs," Currie recalled. But eventually "it was running far too many risks, and it was harder to find free time." Still, she insisted, "we didn't stop because we didn't care about each other."
The ex-politician, who now makes her living writing political romance novels, was clearly stung by Major's dismissal of their affair as the "most shameful" event of his life. Those words, she said, were "cruel to everyone."
He, she said, had acted "atrociously."
"This was not a fling," she fumed. "This was not a fly-by-night affair. If he was that bloody ashamed of it, he could have ended it at any time. He didn't. He wasn't ashamed of it then, and he wanted it to go on."
Even after she called a halt to the liaison in 1988, she said, Major summoned her to his office in March 1989 and, over a glass of tomato juice, sought to rekindle the flames. She said he began touching her until she pulled away, tears in her eyes.
Currie's account in her diaries of that evening with the romantic party whip read like something out of one of her novels: "He said he liked talking to me. I was amusing and nice, and underneath I was as soft as butter. He started to touch, but I couldn't cope with it ..."
She insisted in her radio interview that "we loved and supported each other," but that didn't stop her from dismissing a pet John Major prime ministerial project, his "Back to Basics" citing a desired return to stricter Victorian moral values, as "evil," particularly in light of their own secret lives.
Nor was Currie, who harbored her own dreams of becoming Britain's second female prime minister, pleased when her ex-lover offered her a "crap job" as minister for prisons after he won the 1992 general election.
She appeared bemused by the furor her diaries have stirred up in the world of British politics 2002: "No one is still in power" from the days of their romance, she said. "No one is going to have a career wrecked by this. I don't think it's damaging."
Currie said their secret "has been quite a burden to bear. I chose to bear it until it could do no further damage."
But she scorned suggestions that making money was the prime reason for publishing her diaries and revealing the Major affair to the world.
"I could have made a lot more when he was prime minister," she said. "I wanted, simply, to set the record straight ..."
Folks, you can't make this stuff up!
By the way, I would have tried a bottle of champagne, at least- the romantic properties of tomato juice being still undiscovered...
Major's people always promoted him as Mr. Decency, but somehow it never quite fit. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that he had an affair, but in some vague way, he never quite fit the clean, dutiful, devoted, modest image he wanted to create. He was always that ambitious bank manager who cultivated the image of modesty, professionalism, piety and conformity as an asset in his rise, but whose real values weren't clear to others and may have been very different.
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