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Low Life - Irreverent Reflections from the Bottom of a Glass
Described as the Tony Hancock of journalism, for forty years Bernard wrote only about himself and the failures of his life – with women, drink, doctors, horses – which have become legendary.
Low Life is an irresistible collection of the best of Bernard's celebrated autobiographical contributions to The Spectator, once described as 'a suicide note in weekly instalments'. Previously published in two volumes entitled Low Life: A Kind of Autobiography and Reach for the Ground, these books are now available in a single volume containing all his derisive reflections on life.
Antiauthoritarian, grumpy, charming, politically incorrect, funny, drunk and always mischievous, Bernard could usually be found at the Coach and Horses pub on London’s Greek street, a lit cigarette in his mouth and a drink in hand.
He was joined by famous friends including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Graham Green, Peter O’Toole, Ian Fleming and many others and their conversations – as well as with whomever was tending bar at the time – served as the basis for his writing. There were in fact times when he was too drunk to write, hence the famous "unwell" notice that went next to the large, hastily-sketched cartoon that filled its space in the magazine.
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 1986
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115 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Bernard
11 books4 followersJeffrey Bernard was a British journalist, best known for his weekly column "Low Life" in the Spectator magazine, and also notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abuse. He became associated with the louche and bohemian atmosphere that existed in London's Soho district. He was later immortalised in the comical 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 Oliver Bernard, a poet, and Bruce Bonus Bernard, an art critic and photographer. 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 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 Sporting Life, being poached by The Spectator in 1975. His column was described by Jonathan Meades as a "suicide note in weekly instalments" and principally chronicled, in a faux-naif 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 "Jeff bin in?", as used in the Private Eye strip cartoon "The Regulars", was recognised as a reference to him by readers.
A recording 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 of the track.
Though married four times, he often remarked, only half in jest, that alcohol was the other woman. Over time his drinking affected his health more seriously; he was hospitalised for detoxification, he suffered from pancreatitis and then diabetes. Ultimately his right leg was amputated. He died at his home in Soho of renal failure after voluntarily refusing further treatment by dialysis. Growing weary of his illnesses and yet unable to stop himself drinking, he had discussed 'taking himself out' over a period and in his final farewell Spectator column he discussed how he had discovered how to do that by ingesting bananas, whose potassium content was toxic in his condition.His gravestone lies at the top of racehorse trainer Barry Hills gallops in Lambourn, Berkshire.
Born in London, the son of Oliver Percy Bernard and Dora Hodges (1896–1950), an opera singer, he was the brother of Oliver Bernard, a poet, and Bruce Bonus Bernard, an art critic and photographer. 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 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 Sporting Life, being poached by The Spectator in 1975. His column was described by Jonathan Meades as a "suicide note in weekly instalments" and principally chronicled, in a faux-naif 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 "Jeff bin in?", as used in the Private Eye strip cartoon "The Regulars", was recognised as a reference to him by readers.
A recording 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 of the track.
Though married four times, he often remarked, only half in jest, that alcohol was the other woman. Over time his drinking affected his health more seriously; he was hospitalised for detoxification, he suffered from pancreatitis and then diabetes. Ultimately his right leg was amputated. He died at his home in Soho of renal failure after voluntarily refusing further treatment by dialysis. Growing weary of his illnesses and yet unable to stop himself drinking, he had discussed 'taking himself out' over a period and in his final farewell Spectator column he discussed how he had discovered how to do that by ingesting bananas, whose potassium content was toxic in his condition.His gravestone lies at the top of racehorse trainer Barry Hills gallops in Lambourn, Berkshire.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 12, 2025
Kind of a horrible fellow, but still his bitterness is like honey. Ultra-British wit in consecutive clothing. Now I want to read his bigger brother, Oliver’s memoir. The brother translated Rimbaud in the 1960’s for Penguin classics. Jeffrey is so far away from Arthur, or is he?
November 17, 2019
Jeffrey Bernard’s writings are by turns hilarious, acerbic, self-excoriating, bitter and very sad. I had read only a little of him before now and I’m very glad to have a chance to read more, but it’s a mixed experience for me.
This is a collection of Bernard’s weekly columns for the Spectator which he wrote for about twenty years from 1975 almost until his death from the effects of alcohol abuse. Many of them recount anecdotes of his chaotic life and of the fellow drinkers and other “low life” with whom he associated. The writing is brilliant: it is poised, elegant, witty and (certainly about himself) uncompromisingly frank. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of amusing ones, but there is also a fundamental bleakness under the devil-may-care facade which, in quantity, became quite hard to take. As one might expect, his attitudes, especially toward women, are anything but enlightened and even making allowances for the prevailing views of the period the sexism and misogyny are pretty repellent at times. Set against this is his refusal to have anything to do with pomposity and pretentiousness, and his skewering of them can be very enjoyable.
This is definitely a book to dip into. I can see the appeal of one of these articles per week (or less, because he was frequently and famously “unwell”); too many together left me feeling a bit desolate and rather soiled. The collection has many redeeming features, including the sheer excellence of the prose, but for me needs to be handled with a little care.
(My thanks to Duckworth Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
This is a collection of Bernard’s weekly columns for the Spectator which he wrote for about twenty years from 1975 almost until his death from the effects of alcohol abuse. Many of them recount anecdotes of his chaotic life and of the fellow drinkers and other “low life” with whom he associated. The writing is brilliant: it is poised, elegant, witty and (certainly about himself) uncompromisingly frank. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of amusing ones, but there is also a fundamental bleakness under the devil-may-care facade which, in quantity, became quite hard to take. As one might expect, his attitudes, especially toward women, are anything but enlightened and even making allowances for the prevailing views of the period the sexism and misogyny are pretty repellent at times. Set against this is his refusal to have anything to do with pomposity and pretentiousness, and his skewering of them can be very enjoyable.
This is definitely a book to dip into. I can see the appeal of one of these articles per week (or less, because he was frequently and famously “unwell”); too many together left me feeling a bit desolate and rather soiled. The collection has many redeeming features, including the sheer excellence of the prose, but for me needs to be handled with a little care.
(My thanks to Duckworth Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
March 16, 2016
A book for the same mood as Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner. It isn't as good a work because it's in close-up: this is the barfly talking straight to you, perceptive, boring, unwittingly empathic, slurring, rambling, cruel, candid and funny (and of course the rarer skill of music is absent). Both, whilst hardly shying away from the dark side, make a kind of sullen, messy dejection almost cool - in itself this is company for misery.
Characterful and sometimes objectionable drunks are, perhaps, the same anywhere. Plenty of these pieces could be scripts for Frank Gallagher or Rab C. Nesbitt (the meandering yet witty rants - usually unPC but sometimes surprisingly compassionate - the bedsit squalor, the debt collectors*, the drunk and disorderly arrests, the local that may as well be his living room, his dodgy mates there). It's just that his accent is posher, you might have heard of a few of his friends - the most enduringly famous being Tom Baker - and the generous expense accounts and freebies doled out to 1970s-80s London journalists meant that whilst he was personally in penury, he got some very good dollops of the high life too: a Christmas dinner at the Hilton, or being holiday in Barbados whilst back home he's served with a garnishee order. Bernard's 'Low Life' column in the Spectator ran for many years as a supposed contrast to a 'High Life' column by Europosh socialite Taki. Which I haven't read, but I do remember Taki's later stint on a paper we got regularly, probably the Sunday Times, and thinking him the most boring thing in the entire slab of tree.
Enjoyment of this, as well as being dependent on how entertaining one finds this sort of character, may be contingent on the extent to which you're familiar with a lot of the names dropped - one for Soho history enthusiasts or those who recall the British press of the 1980s. Thanks to reading the Guardian on the floor when I wasn't that much bigger than it, and in the days of the all-caps masthead, I can... (Although perhaps if you just like this sort of thing - I do remember getting much fun out of a book of Keith Waterhouse's 1970s columns, Mondays Thursdays, found at my gran's when I was a teenager). It was evident why Low Life had fallen out of print some years back - reissued in ebook form a couple of months ago, however.
Whilst I read a biography of Bernard recently, the extent of his candidness was still surprising (he also said more about his failings than the biographer implied - but because of his tone, one wouldn't necessarily take it seriously). Really quite a lot of these pieces are about being in hospital - his accounts of other patients and nurses is reminiscent of Alfie in hospital with a tad more self-awareness - so the magazine's frequent statement 'Jeffrey Bernard is unwell', in place of a missing column, wasn't actually just a cover for a bad hangover and manflu, he really was in a bad way, with alcohol induced pancreatitis, diabetes and smoker's lungs. He would likely make some drinkers think about cutting down. The other thing is that one always supposes this sort of witty character not to feel any great sense of loss and regret over their exes, to consider themselves well rid (cf. the track 'Better Off Without a Wife' on the aforementioned Waits album). But Bernard, although scornful about certain types of women, is quite frequently overwhelmed by loneliness and remorse for his actions - although it's evident that he can't and won't really be any different. (Incidentally, who on earth are these women in their early twenties who go out with out-of-shape men thirty years their senior? And what do they really think? There are far too many reports of their existence for them to be entirely a figment, but I don't think I've ever met one.)
The most - oddly - useful essay was the first, 'Happy Days', in which JB describes the aching sense of loss involved in going through a cache of old photos. (It's also more focused than many of the other pieces.) Before I'd even finished it, I went ruthlessly through two boxes of paperwork that needed sifting, much more efficiently than I'd expected to. Having already felt the worst in empathy with the book, the reality was almost a doddle. But then Bernard apparently supposed that people liked his writing because he showed them that things could be worse.
* He predated the equally infamous, though less-well liked, Liz Jones by at least 25 years in implicitly asking readers for help with his debts.
Many quotes & notes now added below.
Characterful and sometimes objectionable drunks are, perhaps, the same anywhere. Plenty of these pieces could be scripts for Frank Gallagher or Rab C. Nesbitt (the meandering yet witty rants - usually unPC but sometimes surprisingly compassionate - the bedsit squalor, the debt collectors*, the drunk and disorderly arrests, the local that may as well be his living room, his dodgy mates there). It's just that his accent is posher, you might have heard of a few of his friends - the most enduringly famous being Tom Baker - and the generous expense accounts and freebies doled out to 1970s-80s London journalists meant that whilst he was personally in penury, he got some very good dollops of the high life too: a Christmas dinner at the Hilton, or being holiday in Barbados whilst back home he's served with a garnishee order. Bernard's 'Low Life' column in the Spectator ran for many years as a supposed contrast to a 'High Life' column by Europosh socialite Taki. Which I haven't read, but I do remember Taki's later stint on a paper we got regularly, probably the Sunday Times, and thinking him the most boring thing in the entire slab of tree.
Enjoyment of this, as well as being dependent on how entertaining one finds this sort of character, may be contingent on the extent to which you're familiar with a lot of the names dropped - one for Soho history enthusiasts or those who recall the British press of the 1980s. Thanks to reading the Guardian on the floor when I wasn't that much bigger than it, and in the days of the all-caps masthead, I can... (Although perhaps if you just like this sort of thing - I do remember getting much fun out of a book of Keith Waterhouse's 1970s columns, Mondays Thursdays, found at my gran's when I was a teenager). It was evident why Low Life had fallen out of print some years back - reissued in ebook form a couple of months ago, however.
Whilst I read a biography of Bernard recently, the extent of his candidness was still surprising (he also said more about his failings than the biographer implied - but because of his tone, one wouldn't necessarily take it seriously). Really quite a lot of these pieces are about being in hospital - his accounts of other patients and nurses is reminiscent of Alfie in hospital with a tad more self-awareness - so the magazine's frequent statement 'Jeffrey Bernard is unwell', in place of a missing column, wasn't actually just a cover for a bad hangover and manflu, he really was in a bad way, with alcohol induced pancreatitis, diabetes and smoker's lungs. He would likely make some drinkers think about cutting down. The other thing is that one always supposes this sort of witty character not to feel any great sense of loss and regret over their exes, to consider themselves well rid (cf. the track 'Better Off Without a Wife' on the aforementioned Waits album). But Bernard, although scornful about certain types of women, is quite frequently overwhelmed by loneliness and remorse for his actions - although it's evident that he can't and won't really be any different. (Incidentally, who on earth are these women in their early twenties who go out with out-of-shape men thirty years their senior? And what do they really think? There are far too many reports of their existence for them to be entirely a figment, but I don't think I've ever met one.)
The most - oddly - useful essay was the first, 'Happy Days', in which JB describes the aching sense of loss involved in going through a cache of old photos. (It's also more focused than many of the other pieces.) Before I'd even finished it, I went ruthlessly through two boxes of paperwork that needed sifting, much more efficiently than I'd expected to. Having already felt the worst in empathy with the book, the reality was almost a doddle. But then Bernard apparently supposed that people liked his writing because he showed them that things could be worse.
* He predated the equally infamous, though less-well liked, Liz Jones by at least 25 years in implicitly asking readers for help with his debts.
Many quotes & notes now added below.
November 5, 2019
Wow, this brought back some memories. I used to read Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life column regularly in The Spectator magazine throughout the 80s and I’d forgotten how well written and anarchic they were.
Of course his uttering are dated and in many cases totally politically incorrect when read now but they hark back to a time when Soho and Covent Garden was full of so-called characters and was louche and vibrant rather than the homogeneous area that it is now.
Those days are gone now but it’s good to be reminded about them now and again.
A nostalgic and at times hilarious read.
Of course his uttering are dated and in many cases totally politically incorrect when read now but they hark back to a time when Soho and Covent Garden was full of so-called characters and was louche and vibrant rather than the homogeneous area that it is now.
Those days are gone now but it’s good to be reminded about them now and again.
A nostalgic and at times hilarious read.
August 8, 2020
I placed an acquisition request to the Shire Library for this book. A good choice. 'Howlingly funny' it says on the cover by the Daily Express. An accurate assessment, having read many of the pieces within at random. Not a book to necessarily read sequentially from front to back, and thus best a book to own.
The takeaway from this collection is from the piece, Downcast, with Jeffrey reflecting on a string of bad luck. Having lost a £50 note last week, reading a rebuke from his Credit Card in the kitchen and dropping his toast and marmalade landing marmalade-down and feels he can no longer remain an atheist.
The takeaway from this collection is from the piece, Downcast, with Jeffrey reflecting on a string of bad luck. Having lost a £50 note last week, reading a rebuke from his Credit Card in the kitchen and dropping his toast and marmalade landing marmalade-down and feels he can no longer remain an atheist.
April 19, 2007
A must read book from one of lifes great drunks, the man was totally irreverant and sometimes not nice to be around but he told it like it was warts and all.
Read
January 16, 2020A new collection incorporating a couple of the previous ones, none of which I think I've read before – though in some ways distinguishing one Jeffrey Bernard piece from another is the mirror image of trying to tell Wodehouse plots apart by reading the blurb (I swear I've bought Full Moon at least thrice now). Reading Bernard again, 20+ years on from first being intrigued by the pissed-up legend of him, what once seemed fabulously rackety now feels a lot sadder, much less inspiration and much more warning, and not just because Soho is now a shadow of its former self – although of course even at the time of writing, Bernard was adamant that former self was already itself a shadow, even if his complaint was that the cafes and bistros had been replaced with strip joints. Well, it's cycled back around to cafes now, Jeff, but I'm not sure you'd be any keener on them.
Keith Waterhouse and Peter O'Toole distilled 90-odd minutes of tattered glamour from Bernard's life and writings, but a lot of the time these columns are wearisome 'sideways look at the news' stuff; complaints that one can't make jokes about blacks anymore; mutterings about "so-called trendy young people obsessed by pop music", women, pub bores, and whoever else he feels has done him wrong lately, which could be pretty much anyone, because he's a self-pitying drunk, and they're pricks like that however central their postcode. Several times I considered cutting my losses, but then I'd happen across a sentence like "Anyway, the vicar of Chaddleworth once told me that I was beyond redemption. A pretty shitty thing for a vicar to say, by the way, but he had been at the Bells." Or, rhapsodising on a waitress to whom he's taken a fancy - itself not an edifying notion, but he does manage this on her nose: "How God and genes can make perfection out of gristle is nothing short of a miracle." Besides, pieces like this are great for reading in the lift, or similar times when you can't settle to anything of the least substance. And there are moments when Bernard is at least insulated by the reader's knowledge that the people he's slagging off are even bigger wankers than he is, as in the digs at an unnamed, pre-fame, but still easily identifiable John McCririck.
The second book here, Reach For The Ground, opens with the longest pieces in the volume, brief essays on booze, on Soho and on the play derived from the earlier work. Exempt from weekly deadlines or wordcounts, they're undoubtedly the most resonant stuff in the volume, managing for whole pages the wistful, reflective, burned-out wisdom which elsewhere can only poke the odd shoot through the half-arsed satire and score-settling. Not that they're entirely exempt from those vices, of course; even when talking about how well the play did (and I never knew, and find it hard to visualise, that for a time Dennis Waterman took the lead), Bernard still finds time for a page or two of lovingly-collected reviews which either disapproved of the project altogether, or else specified that it was good despite Bernard's own failings. Before that, though, there are some wonderful lines: "Past intimacies gather in the mind and you suddenly remember that we go on and and on hurting each other. I do anyway." Or, and with this one I can definitely sympathise, "From the very beginning I never really enjoyed being drunk and I never have. It was only the process of becoming so that appealed and particularly that half-way stage which is all too brief. Drunkenness was and is merely an inevitable accident at the end of every day."
The subsequent, later columns aren't much fun, though. There's a degree of meta enjoyment to be derived from the success of the play and its attendant raising of his profile – "It felt much better to be 'Jeffrey Bernard, the drunk' than just 'that drunk'." And there are glimmers of joy; it's hard to think any life wholly wasted in which Marlene Dietrich has told you you're wonderful, or which featured semi-regular friendly lunches with Graham Greene. But often, these reminiscences attend the death of their subjects, and Jeff too is becoming an increasingly frail figure here, with ever more bits of him breaking, packing up or sawn off. Which, of course, is only to be expected after a life devoted chiefly to drinking spirits, but sometimes that sort of fairness feels profoundly unfair – I was reminded of the Facebook tag group called something like 'well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions'. The whole point of people like Bernard was that, like infernal saints, they were meant to get away with it, serve as terrible examples, lead the young folk astray. Except, of course, that reading the columns en masse, one realises even before the body really starts shutting down that Bernard really was nothing to emulate. Yes, he's in surprising though unwitting agreement with S*M*A*S*H about what Virginia Bottomley deserves for the state of the NHS, and there's the chillingly prescient line "It is a mercy there aren't more referendums in this country. They would be hanging children." But far too often, it's like listening to your gammon uncle in his cups, and this despite the fact that by this point Bernard's finally got bored of pubs and is mostly on the wagon. As with the Will Self autobiography, a salutary reminder that for all my disdain of Jordan Peterson's disciples, I would do well to remember that boys have always had lousy taste in heroes.
(Netgalley ARC)
Keith Waterhouse and Peter O'Toole distilled 90-odd minutes of tattered glamour from Bernard's life and writings, but a lot of the time these columns are wearisome 'sideways look at the news' stuff; complaints that one can't make jokes about blacks anymore; mutterings about "so-called trendy young people obsessed by pop music", women, pub bores, and whoever else he feels has done him wrong lately, which could be pretty much anyone, because he's a self-pitying drunk, and they're pricks like that however central their postcode. Several times I considered cutting my losses, but then I'd happen across a sentence like "Anyway, the vicar of Chaddleworth once told me that I was beyond redemption. A pretty shitty thing for a vicar to say, by the way, but he had been at the Bells." Or, rhapsodising on a waitress to whom he's taken a fancy - itself not an edifying notion, but he does manage this on her nose: "How God and genes can make perfection out of gristle is nothing short of a miracle." Besides, pieces like this are great for reading in the lift, or similar times when you can't settle to anything of the least substance. And there are moments when Bernard is at least insulated by the reader's knowledge that the people he's slagging off are even bigger wankers than he is, as in the digs at an unnamed, pre-fame, but still easily identifiable John McCririck.
The second book here, Reach For The Ground, opens with the longest pieces in the volume, brief essays on booze, on Soho and on the play derived from the earlier work. Exempt from weekly deadlines or wordcounts, they're undoubtedly the most resonant stuff in the volume, managing for whole pages the wistful, reflective, burned-out wisdom which elsewhere can only poke the odd shoot through the half-arsed satire and score-settling. Not that they're entirely exempt from those vices, of course; even when talking about how well the play did (and I never knew, and find it hard to visualise, that for a time Dennis Waterman took the lead), Bernard still finds time for a page or two of lovingly-collected reviews which either disapproved of the project altogether, or else specified that it was good despite Bernard's own failings. Before that, though, there are some wonderful lines: "Past intimacies gather in the mind and you suddenly remember that we go on and and on hurting each other. I do anyway." Or, and with this one I can definitely sympathise, "From the very beginning I never really enjoyed being drunk and I never have. It was only the process of becoming so that appealed and particularly that half-way stage which is all too brief. Drunkenness was and is merely an inevitable accident at the end of every day."
The subsequent, later columns aren't much fun, though. There's a degree of meta enjoyment to be derived from the success of the play and its attendant raising of his profile – "It felt much better to be 'Jeffrey Bernard, the drunk' than just 'that drunk'." And there are glimmers of joy; it's hard to think any life wholly wasted in which Marlene Dietrich has told you you're wonderful, or which featured semi-regular friendly lunches with Graham Greene. But often, these reminiscences attend the death of their subjects, and Jeff too is becoming an increasingly frail figure here, with ever more bits of him breaking, packing up or sawn off. Which, of course, is only to be expected after a life devoted chiefly to drinking spirits, but sometimes that sort of fairness feels profoundly unfair – I was reminded of the Facebook tag group called something like 'well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions'. The whole point of people like Bernard was that, like infernal saints, they were meant to get away with it, serve as terrible examples, lead the young folk astray. Except, of course, that reading the columns en masse, one realises even before the body really starts shutting down that Bernard really was nothing to emulate. Yes, he's in surprising though unwitting agreement with S*M*A*S*H about what Virginia Bottomley deserves for the state of the NHS, and there's the chillingly prescient line "It is a mercy there aren't more referendums in this country. They would be hanging children." But far too often, it's like listening to your gammon uncle in his cups, and this despite the fact that by this point Bernard's finally got bored of pubs and is mostly on the wagon. As with the Will Self autobiography, a salutary reminder that for all my disdain of Jordan Peterson's disciples, I would do well to remember that boys have always had lousy taste in heroes.
(Netgalley ARC)
January 15, 2010
Stimulated to read this by the genius acting of Peter O'Toole
March 9, 2025
As far as I gathered from this autobiography, Jeffrey Bernard was an abhorrent misogynist, racist and all-round awful bloke. But, I guess uncomfortably, he is also an excellently cynical and funny writer. So, the end result is this oddly amusing but at times deeply problematic reading experience. One minute, I'd be enjoying a story about how he disgraced himself at a journalist event at Cheltenham or tried beating a hangover by getting drunk again at 11am. But then the next page, he would go on this awful tirade about women's rights or make downright racist comments about other customers he saw in an expensive restaurant.
The best way I can describe his writing is like listening to a racist grandad tell funny stories. Sometimes they'll carry across generations and be just as funny. Other times, it becomes abundantly clear that poor old grandpa is forgetting that times have changed and that, no, he can't say words like that or make those sorts of jokes anymore. And you'll desperately want to change the subject before grandpa says something even worse. Only problem with this book is you can't tell Jeffrey Bernard to stop. He just, at times, keeps going, and keeps saying awful things.......
But as a reading experience, boy did it make me feel some things. I love his cynicism, and his hatred for normal life and love for the 'low life': getting disgustingly drunk in pubs with nutters like himself and dealing with the wretched consequences tomorrow.
The best way I can describe his writing is like listening to a racist grandad tell funny stories. Sometimes they'll carry across generations and be just as funny. Other times, it becomes abundantly clear that poor old grandpa is forgetting that times have changed and that, no, he can't say words like that or make those sorts of jokes anymore. And you'll desperately want to change the subject before grandpa says something even worse. Only problem with this book is you can't tell Jeffrey Bernard to stop. He just, at times, keeps going, and keeps saying awful things.......
But as a reading experience, boy did it make me feel some things. I love his cynicism, and his hatred for normal life and love for the 'low life': getting disgustingly drunk in pubs with nutters like himself and dealing with the wretched consequences tomorrow.
December 22, 2025
The antidote to Bukowski's Post Office.
On his first encounter with comedian Tony Hancock:
Bernard in his alcoholic anecdotage tells some bracing stories about the drinking life in mid-20th-century Soho, London, and they're some of the funniest moments in the book. But he also reminisces wonderfully about his youth, his marriages and the worlds of British newspapers and horse racing, and keeps his readers up to date on an array of financial and health crises. The tone ranges from startlingly honest -- he appears to have been a belligerent SOB under certain circumstances at home and in public -- to thoughtful to amused, with very little self-pity or apologizing for a life you or I might have labeled ill-spent. By the time of his death he had ascended from mere journalist to minor celebrity thanks to the success of a play about his life, but it doesn't seem to have changed his lifestyle or outlook at all. A great collection of columns and longer fragments of autobiography, which has forced me to splash out for a copy of his friend Graham Lord's Just the One: The Wives and Times of Jeffrey Bernard.
On his first encounter with comedian Tony Hancock:
What a monumental piss-up that turned out to be. Hancock and I started out at opening time in the French pub and I saw him off ten hours later. I put him into a taxi -- the driver wouldn't have taken him if he hadn't been Hancock -- and he collapsed on the floor and then handed me his card from a supine position saying, "Phone me if you get into trouble. I think you may have a drinking problem."
Bernard in his alcoholic anecdotage tells some bracing stories about the drinking life in mid-20th-century Soho, London, and they're some of the funniest moments in the book. But he also reminisces wonderfully about his youth, his marriages and the worlds of British newspapers and horse racing, and keeps his readers up to date on an array of financial and health crises. The tone ranges from startlingly honest -- he appears to have been a belligerent SOB under certain circumstances at home and in public -- to thoughtful to amused, with very little self-pity or apologizing for a life you or I might have labeled ill-spent. By the time of his death he had ascended from mere journalist to minor celebrity thanks to the success of a play about his life, but it doesn't seem to have changed his lifestyle or outlook at all. A great collection of columns and longer fragments of autobiography, which has forced me to splash out for a copy of his friend Graham Lord's Just the One: The Wives and Times of Jeffrey Bernard.
July 30, 2020
I purchased this book after watching Peter O'Tooles' magical performance on stage as Bernard in Jeffrey Bernard is unwell, and boy am I glad I did. Bernard was one of the last, if not the last of the old Fleet Street hacks. This book is a collection of his Spectator columns, and they are brilliant, they are Jeff in print, a hard drinking opinionated laugh out loud collection of this old curmudgeons experiences and indeed his life, which were drinking women and the turf. Bernard was unique his prose perfect, this is a great book.
December 11, 2019
This is not really something of which I am proud, but there was a time, in the 1990s, when I was a regular reader of The Spectator magazine. I hasten to add that I was not, at that time or, indeed, at any time, an admirer of the political stance of that magazine and I do hope that I can rely on you all to keep this embarrassing admission to yourselves.
If I remember those distant and, in comparison with today, relatively peaceful and uneventful times correctly, The Spectator, and its readers, were somewhat dissatisfied with John Major’s Conservative government and I must admit that I bought the magazine for the simple pleasure of witnessing, in its pages, the divisions within the government and its supporters. John Major received a lot of criticism, not to say outright mockery, back then, and it amused me greatly, but now I find that, having witnessed the efforts of the three subsequent Conservative Prime Ministers, John Major’s performance in the role is now appearing more statesmanlike as each day passes.
So looking back, this guilty pleasure seems to have been a little cynical, not to say priggish, of me but perhaps it helps to explain the fact that the page of the magazine I was certain to turn to each week was Jeffrey Bernard’s “Low Life” column. Bernard didn’t set out to impress this left of centre, liberal young fellow with his curmudgeonly, politically incorrect columns but the fact is that he wrote so elegantly, and with such dry wit, he could not fail to do so. I was hooked.
Bernard’s column served as a contrast, or counterpoint, to The Spectator’s “High Life” column, written each week by “Taki” who is apparently a wealthy socialite, whatever that is. I can remember nothing of “High Life” at all, probably because I never found it interesting or diverting. But when I picked up this book, a collection of Bernard’s “Low Life” columns, I had a clear memory, even after twenty-five years or so, of the style and panache of his writing if not the actual content of his work.
Apart from the women in his life Bernard appears to have had three great loves: Soho, horse-racing and alcohol and these are the great themes that run through all his columns. The “Low Life” that Bernard wrote about each week was the life of Soho where he had lived for much of his adult life. This is the Soho of The Coach and Horses, The French House pub and the Colony Room Club where painters, poets and actors gathered: Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, John Osborne, George Barker, Elizabeth Smart, Beryl Bainbridge, Tom Baker and John Hurt among them. Bernard’s columns are littered with memories and anecdotes of many of them. He writes of a Soho that was, even in his day, slowly dying and that has by now faded into history as corporate interests and rising rents have pushed the old Soho aside and replaced it with the homogenised, sanitised streets that can be found almost anywhere. Soho’s face has been wiped clean of its louche individuality.
Bernard’s own drinking was prodigious, and it did occasionally undermine his career as a journalist. He was famously sacked by Sporting Life as a result of his drunken behaviour the precise details of which are never fully revealed. On the occasions when he was unable to deliver his weekly column to The Spectator on time, they would simply note in the magazine that “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell”. Despite his lifelong dedication to the consumption of alcohol and his sometimes outlandish behaviour his editors appear to have been a rather tolerant bunch and he was able to maintain a reasonably successful career as a journalist. This can only have been because of the quality of his writing and the sharpness of his wit.
Bernard’s health, though, was certainly affected by his heavy consumption of alcohol which at one point is said to have been as much as a bottle and a half to two bottles of vodka a day. The cartoonist Michael Heath is credited with noting that Bernard’s hobby in life was the observation of his own physical dissolution and towards the end of his life there is certainly an increased preoccupation with his declining health in his columns. He suffered from pancreatitis and diabetes which led to his having a leg amputated below the knee. On that occasion The Spectator noted “Jeffrey Bernard has had his leg off”.
He treats his own ill health, and it’s causes, with the same wit and clear-eyed honesty as he does everything he writes about in his columns and while there is some self-criticism and even some sadness, there is little bitterness. He is appreciative of the care he receives from the NHS and writes amusingly, but mostly compassionately, about his fellow hospital patients. He is equally appreciative of the help he receives from the friends that rally round when he needs them.
Re-reading his columns all these years later I have been surprised at how much I enjoyed them. I think the reason for that is that while he can be acerbic, grumpy and irritable he directs his grumpiness at himself as much, if not more so, as he does towards others, and he always seems to be honest and fair in his criticisms. I enjoyed this book a lot although I have to say that it is a book to be dipped into rather than one to be read from cover to cover.
I would like to express my thanks to NetGalley and Duckworth for making a free download of this book available to me.
January 7, 2023
A collection of columns. It is an interesting snapshot of soho in the eighties, and a glimpse of the life of an aging alcoholic. Not all of these columns are top notch, and I felt the quality dropped towards the end (although the reasons are quite apparent). Bernard is interesting company, even on a bad day.
February 2, 2024
Oh to be in the Coach and Horses, Soho, in the 1980s flanked between Tom Baker and Jeffrey Bernard while Francis Bacon is up ordering another round of large vodkas.
February 4, 2026
naughty but nice!
Oh dear! This is a very ‘old school male’ book, it is charismatic and often intelligent though and it does make me smile :)
Oh dear! This is a very ‘old school male’ book, it is charismatic and often intelligent though and it does make me smile :)
December 10, 2019
Twenty years ago my best friend died from Korsakoff’s syndrome, a little-known form of dementia linked to alcohol, not a death that most people associate with drinking.
Given that I should have really disliked this series of essays, in which drinking forms a contiguous thread throughout.
Painfully honest chronicling Jeffrey Bernard's failing health; humorous with characters from a bygone day, which is its only fault in that many people featured have slipped from modern memories; and elegantly written.
"I don't know of much work more tedious than reviewing a book that one doesn't want to read in the first place, but it is useful work and cannot be turned down."
So he writes in this witty compilation, for this reviewer it was hardly a tedious chore.
Given that I should have really disliked this series of essays, in which drinking forms a contiguous thread throughout.
Painfully honest chronicling Jeffrey Bernard's failing health; humorous with characters from a bygone day, which is its only fault in that many people featured have slipped from modern memories; and elegantly written.
"I don't know of much work more tedious than reviewing a book that one doesn't want to read in the first place, but it is useful work and cannot be turned down."
So he writes in this witty compilation, for this reviewer it was hardly a tedious chore.
July 5, 2023
I first discovered Bernard's Low Life column in the pages of the Spectator and was impressed by his combination of humour, honesty, and humility. This collection is taken from his later years when he not only had to deal with alcoholism, poverty, and ill health, but also a sudden and belated boost of fame when the play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell became an instant West End hit. Though he welcomed the attention (and the royalties), he was also uncomfortable with being the subject of documentaries, interviews, and speaking engagements with people and places that previously couldn't wait to see the back of him.
August 2, 2007
Those who don’t know any better would call him a cynic.
But frankly, I take him to be quite a realist.
What this book has is Mr. Bernard’s first hand account of life. As he sees it. Week after week. Most of it, after he’s immersed himself in bottle of a well aged single malt.
And I am left to wonder, what if perhaps, this is as good as it gets!
But frankly, I take him to be quite a realist.
What this book has is Mr. Bernard’s first hand account of life. As he sees it. Week after week. Most of it, after he’s immersed himself in bottle of a well aged single malt.
And I am left to wonder, what if perhaps, this is as good as it gets!
March 19, 2014
Absolute classic
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