Forgive Bercow his youthful indiscretion
Saturday, December 5, 2009 Following the extraordinary interview given by his wife to the London Evening Standard in which she volunteered more information than most of us need to know, the Speaker has been outed as the author of an article entitled "The John Bercow Guide to Understanding Women".
Written in 1986 for the "radical" student magazine Armageddon, it advises readers ‘How to pick up drunk girls’, ‘How to pick up virgins’, ‘How to pick up refined girls’, ‘How to get rid of a girl during sex’ and ‘How to get rid of a girl after sex’. Story HERE.
According to Bercow's spokesman, the article "doesn't reflect the Speaker's current views", which I'm sure is true.
A few years before Armageddon I edited a similar magazine called Campus. Earlier this year I found some back copies in the garage and although I had always been very proud of it, reading it today is quite an embarrassing experience.
At the time, however, Campus enjoyed a cult following. It was compared to Private Eye and generated a lot of publicity, most of it negative, which we considered proof of its popularity.
In 1983, at the height our "success", we even published a "Greatest Hits" edition. The cover featured a collage of earlier front covers with straplines such as "Bad Taste Xmas Issue", "Special Sexist Edition" and "We're Revealing So You Don't Have To Be".
Inside women's naked breasts competed for attention alongside headlines such as "Spot the pussy", "The fallacies of feminism" and "This could give you sleepless nights".
In 1984 we published a full page cartoon featuring a nuclear warhead shaking hands with a tampon. The caption read: "Girls, NATO guarantees peaceful periods".
And the less said about "The Campus Guide to Deviation" (written by someone who is now one of David Cameron's leading speechwriters) the better.
My point is, we all do things when we are young that appear less than clever - or funny - years later. The Bercows do not deserve to be pilloried for being normal.
Note: editors of Armageddon included Harry Phibbs (see previous post) and a certain B Monteith (of this parish). It's a small world.
Simon Clark
I have just found this cutting from the Aberdeen Evening Express (circa 1982) :
In Aberdeen the Tories seemed to win the war of words, partly because of the popularity of an independent but strongly Conservative newspaper called Campus. It had a lively style and it was no surprise when its editors were threatened with libel after questioning the motives and examining the private life of a leading student politician. The action was settled out of court.
A re-launch of the newspaper, sponsored now by Tory businessmen, is planned with a national circulation of 15-20,000. It aims to compete with the National Union of Students' newspaper National Student on a diet of "sex, drink and gossip".
The Sunday Times, meanwhile, reported that:
Plans are now well advanced to launch a rival to Private Eye. The student magazine started out at Aberdeen University. Having gained their first libel writ and a taste for bashing Trots and feminists, they decided to go national. A star attraction in the scurrilous new project is a Nymphomaniac's Diary ...
The rest, as they say, is history. BTW, whatever happened to Private Eye?
Simon Clark
Commons Speaker John Bercow denies writing sex guide (BBC News): "Mr Bercow said in a statement it had been a parody of him at a time when he was chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students."
Reader Comments (2)
I'm happy to let John Bercow's past indiscretions go - we've all done things we wish we hadn't. What I'm concerned about is his present indiscretion, as the theoretically politically-independent Speaker of the House of Commons, of letting his wife use his chambers to give a politically-loaded interview.
As the founding Editor of Armageddon (1979-1983) I can say that the article is typical of the type of humorous spoof that would be written to give the impression that Bercow was a ladies man. The joke was that John was anything but - although charismatic he was the most chaotically disorganised individual that I knew and pulling a bird was generally thought beyond him. He was also too modest to write something that might say otherwise. Suggesting that he was some great lothario must have been a laugh to whoever wrote it.
I am also unaware that my old friend Harry Phibbs was ever an Editor of Armageddon - the magazine was published by the Scottish Federation of Conservative Students and Harry was never a student in Scotland - Harry was a Young Conservative in London - the only thing the two organisations had in common was the word Conservative.