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Just the One: The Wives and Times of Jeffrey Bernard
A biography of the legendary bohemian British journalist, drinker and womaniser whose rackety life was immortalised on the London West End stage by Peter O'Toole in Keith Waterhouse’s award-winning play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell and in later productions by Tom Conti, James Bolam, O’Toole again and Dennis Waterman. Bernard, who died in 1997, was a most unlikely hero of our times. What other bottle-of-vodka-and-50-cigarettes-a-day scribbler has also been a gigolo, navvy, fairground boxer, miner, stagehand, film editor and actor? Who else has been married four times, seduced 500 lovers (including several famous actresses) and become a personal friend of the novelists Graham Greene and Alice Thomas Ellis, the painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, the jockeys Lester Piggott and Fred Winter, the actors Tom Baker, John Hurt, John le Mesurier and Wendy Richard?
Bernard was compared to Pepys and Boswell, had a racehorse named after him, and was described by his admirer John Osborne as “the Tony Hancock of journalism.” He was convicted of shoplifting, tax-dodging and assaulting a rubber-plant and wrote regularly for numerous newspapers and magazines from the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Queen and Men Only to The Sporting Life and his famous ‘Low Life’ diary column in The Spectator – his notorious ‘suicide note in weekly instalments.’
Graham Lord was a friend of Bernard’s for twenty years and interviewed dozens of his other friends – and enemies – to write a biography that is fun, frank and critical yet unexpectedly touching. Jeffrey Bernard was indeed unique – just the one.
Bernard was compared to Pepys and Boswell, had a racehorse named after him, and was described by his admirer John Osborne as “the Tony Hancock of journalism.” He was convicted of shoplifting, tax-dodging and assaulting a rubber-plant and wrote regularly for numerous newspapers and magazines from the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Queen and Men Only to The Sporting Life and his famous ‘Low Life’ diary column in The Spectator – his notorious ‘suicide note in weekly instalments.’
Graham Lord was a friend of Bernard’s for twenty years and interviewed dozens of his other friends – and enemies – to write a biography that is fun, frank and critical yet unexpectedly touching. Jeffrey Bernard was indeed unique – just the one.
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First published November 9, 1992
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August 31, 2016[3.5] Absolutely serviceable, but not one of those great biographies worth reading even if you’re not that interested in the subject. (Would it even be of interest to fans of other twentieth-century roguish alcoholic journalists? TBH still better to start with other sources. The play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell and the man's own writing are both considerably more entertaining.)
Reading this was an odd way to celebrate minor joy at Bernard’s own books just being reprinted and ebooked – to read the cheapish biog that had been there longer, first: but I hadn’t wanted to read it without the possibility of the subject in plenty of his own, far higher calibre, words too. I’d looked for Bernard's books plenty of times this century, and every time they were out of print. Perhaps it’s projecting too much, but the idea of second-hand copies of Jeffrey Bernard books was always unappealing: I imagined them arriving stained and stinking. (Which prissiness I’ve little doubt the author would castigate.) Anyway, because of the play, I couldn’t believe the columns wouldn’t be eventually reprinted or collected. Just surprised it took so long.
It may be strange to have consumed this as comfort reading. But that’s because of connection with a number of Bernard fans I’ve known, all much nicer than the unvarnished version of the author. Because of the similarity of various details of his life and personality with them and others, and with other biographies. Because of nostalgia for the vanished world of the press as it was when I was growing up wanting to be part of it. And, of course, the play – the 1999 TV version with Peter O’Toole. I taped it off the telly and watched it several times over the next couple of years, introducing my ex to it. (He, not being such an avid consumer of newspapers, hadn’t heard of the man before.) As I predicted, he loved it and proclaimed Bernard one of his heroes, in the pantheon with Hunter S. Thompson and the like. He seemed so original in those dial-up days when I’d never heard of any similar characters, didn’t know that the HST-worshipping twentysomething man was a trope. Though most of them probably don’t have the charisma to live up to it as he did. Whilst I knew I’d miss it, I gave him the tape when we, amicably, split.
Significant in Lord's biography is the idea of the monster behind the myth. The awful family history and childhood that explains most of the rest. The violence (commonplace in his circle when he was young, fights at parties etc, and mutual violence in his marriages). Being sick *on people* (which hardly anyone older than second year students thinks cool, no?) More-cry-for-help overdoses than a teenage My Chemical Romance fan, even into middle age. (If I can't use jibes like that, rather in the spirit of Bernard, here, when can I?) And he was one of those people who, Dementor-like, can unconsciously project a terrible atmosphere; dragging down and maddening some of those who lived with him long-term, sometimes silently. (Having had just such a frightening and unintelligible experience once, I almost refused to believe it, boxed it away as weird and inexplicable, before this book made scientific sense of it and the myriad of non-verbals that create it).
It seems that Bernard never really wanted to work, or to try to. I always assumed him to be one of those who kept trying and burning out, but the anti-work ethic went to the core: as the author says, despite his talent as a writer, he never discovered the pleasure of hard creative work. The pilfering and the failure to pay back loans wasn’t surprising, just a less jocular listing of what was already obvious. Also there’s that tone you don’t get in newer biographies quite so much, I think: “we must drag them out of the closet whether they like it or not”, and a long discussion of whether he may have been bi, at least in his youth.
Some of his pranks and practical jokes are of the “you had to be there” variety and don’t seem quite so spectacular to those of us decades younger than the author, by which time every third student flat generated such stories. Legend among your mates, yes fair enough, but this stuff doesn’t quite cut it nationally without the sharp verbal delivery.
Rottenness and misery there may be, but there is still frequently a sense that he was having fun, and that people, especially those who didn’t have to live with him, enjoyed his company. He was a very lucky and often charming misfit who stumbled into a niche - in Soho, racecourses and the London press - that fitted him as perfectly as any could, and who got a level of respect that not many people with quite such serious problems attain. The pictures in the middle of the book were a let-down after the repeated references, from many sources, to his physical beauty as a young man and into middle age - of course I'd imagined him like a young Peter O'Toole. It's presumably a question of type and the times. He resembled one of those late-1950s packaged popstars, with a somewhat chunky build that didn't tally with the "slight", "featherweight" descriptions.
Rather oddly, the author repeatedly castigates Bernard for not being more grateful to his mother and her efforts to pay for his schooling, as if all children need is material provision, and as if it was likely for him to have got insight into one particular aspect of his life when he hadn’t with any of the others - he never made any great effort to address the mess he was in. It’s probably easier to be a mess who has a prestigious education than one who hasn’t, but a mixture of random neglect, screaming and twisted spousification isn’t good for anybody. (The family situation was far worse for his sister, the least-favourite child, who was literally driven mad, and then her brothers ignored her for most of her adult life.)
Otherwise the tone is pretty balanced, and Lord has, wherever possible, tracked down more than one side to every story, talking to dozens of friends and relatives, and recording all the contradictions without a great deal of interpretation. (And there are a fair few contradictions. Reading about the gaps between Bernard’s self-descriptions and self-perceptions stated in honesty about matters which seem quite factual [such as whether one had/has many friends at a certain time], and how things looked to others, was reassuring - I’d encountered something similar, though not on the same scale, in another person and not known what to make of it: quite outside my previous experience with any other people, or all the relevant books I’d read. There isn’t an explanation here – it’s not a psychology textbook - but at least I know it now as something which appears related to certain types of personality, early experience, and possibly damage caused by substances, which I’d suspected but had no context for.)
Graham Lord’s writing is simply the sort that gets the job done, nothing fancy, and the wittiest bits are excerpts from Bernard’s own work. The book is likely intended to be read a bit more slowly than I did - I couldn’t stop once I’d started reading the preview - but it did start to pall in the middle. Conveniently, that was just before Bernard gave up drinking for two and a half years and became a tad dour and puritanical, which varied the narrative and kept the interest. (Incidentally, I’m sure this edition was nearer the 368 page count given for the paperback than 254 for the Kindle.)
Characters like Bernard and HST were fascinating because they were original in their contexts. But now all the kids want to write gonzo / confessional, most of them haven’t got the talent and so few journalists are getting paid for it any more, even the good ones. It’s easy to understand why these characters might seem a bit less exciting or amusing to younger people, especially those who've never had much to rebel against. But a sense of the waning public appeal of their type is difficult to judge because I'm now reading different sources with different attitudes – e.g. the moralisers so prevalent on Goodreads who judge artists primarily by the worst parts of their biographies, and on political correctness over style and wit. The people who do that often feel they are kicking against a dominant force, whereas others of us perceive them as part of one, albeit one which may have resurged after a brief liberal blip.
This article cites Bernard as the pioneer of the confessional column (I’ve heard others mentioned as such, can’t remember who) – a trend that when technology caught up, launched a hundred thousand blogs. A man who hated nothing so much as a bore (but who admitted that he’d become one as his health failed), who arguably helped start a trend which led to the decline of the term as the most absolute and damning English criticism, as per this article by the son of one of his friends.
Reading this was an odd way to celebrate minor joy at Bernard’s own books just being reprinted and ebooked – to read the cheapish biog that had been there longer, first: but I hadn’t wanted to read it without the possibility of the subject in plenty of his own, far higher calibre, words too. I’d looked for Bernard's books plenty of times this century, and every time they were out of print. Perhaps it’s projecting too much, but the idea of second-hand copies of Jeffrey Bernard books was always unappealing: I imagined them arriving stained and stinking. (Which prissiness I’ve little doubt the author would castigate.) Anyway, because of the play, I couldn’t believe the columns wouldn’t be eventually reprinted or collected. Just surprised it took so long.
It may be strange to have consumed this as comfort reading. But that’s because of connection with a number of Bernard fans I’ve known, all much nicer than the unvarnished version of the author. Because of the similarity of various details of his life and personality with them and others, and with other biographies. Because of nostalgia for the vanished world of the press as it was when I was growing up wanting to be part of it. And, of course, the play – the 1999 TV version with Peter O’Toole. I taped it off the telly and watched it several times over the next couple of years, introducing my ex to it. (He, not being such an avid consumer of newspapers, hadn’t heard of the man before.) As I predicted, he loved it and proclaimed Bernard one of his heroes, in the pantheon with Hunter S. Thompson and the like. He seemed so original in those dial-up days when I’d never heard of any similar characters, didn’t know that the HST-worshipping twentysomething man was a trope. Though most of them probably don’t have the charisma to live up to it as he did. Whilst I knew I’d miss it, I gave him the tape when we, amicably, split.
Significant in Lord's biography is the idea of the monster behind the myth. The awful family history and childhood that explains most of the rest. The violence (commonplace in his circle when he was young, fights at parties etc, and mutual violence in his marriages). Being sick *on people* (which hardly anyone older than second year students thinks cool, no?) More-cry-for-help overdoses than a teenage My Chemical Romance fan, even into middle age. (If I can't use jibes like that, rather in the spirit of Bernard, here, when can I?) And he was one of those people who, Dementor-like, can unconsciously project a terrible atmosphere; dragging down and maddening some of those who lived with him long-term, sometimes silently. (Having had just such a frightening and unintelligible experience once, I almost refused to believe it, boxed it away as weird and inexplicable, before this book made scientific sense of it and the myriad of non-verbals that create it).
It seems that Bernard never really wanted to work, or to try to. I always assumed him to be one of those who kept trying and burning out, but the anti-work ethic went to the core: as the author says, despite his talent as a writer, he never discovered the pleasure of hard creative work. The pilfering and the failure to pay back loans wasn’t surprising, just a less jocular listing of what was already obvious. Also there’s that tone you don’t get in newer biographies quite so much, I think: “we must drag them out of the closet whether they like it or not”, and a long discussion of whether he may have been bi, at least in his youth.
Some of his pranks and practical jokes are of the “you had to be there” variety and don’t seem quite so spectacular to those of us decades younger than the author, by which time every third student flat generated such stories. Legend among your mates, yes fair enough, but this stuff doesn’t quite cut it nationally without the sharp verbal delivery.
Rottenness and misery there may be, but there is still frequently a sense that he was having fun, and that people, especially those who didn’t have to live with him, enjoyed his company. He was a very lucky and often charming misfit who stumbled into a niche - in Soho, racecourses and the London press - that fitted him as perfectly as any could, and who got a level of respect that not many people with quite such serious problems attain. The pictures in the middle of the book were a let-down after the repeated references, from many sources, to his physical beauty as a young man and into middle age - of course I'd imagined him like a young Peter O'Toole. It's presumably a question of type and the times. He resembled one of those late-1950s packaged popstars, with a somewhat chunky build that didn't tally with the "slight", "featherweight" descriptions.
Rather oddly, the author repeatedly castigates Bernard for not being more grateful to his mother and her efforts to pay for his schooling, as if all children need is material provision, and as if it was likely for him to have got insight into one particular aspect of his life when he hadn’t with any of the others - he never made any great effort to address the mess he was in. It’s probably easier to be a mess who has a prestigious education than one who hasn’t, but a mixture of random neglect, screaming and twisted spousification isn’t good for anybody. (The family situation was far worse for his sister, the least-favourite child, who was literally driven mad, and then her brothers ignored her for most of her adult life.)
Otherwise the tone is pretty balanced, and Lord has, wherever possible, tracked down more than one side to every story, talking to dozens of friends and relatives, and recording all the contradictions without a great deal of interpretation. (And there are a fair few contradictions. Reading about the gaps between Bernard’s self-descriptions and self-perceptions stated in honesty about matters which seem quite factual [such as whether one had/has many friends at a certain time], and how things looked to others, was reassuring - I’d encountered something similar, though not on the same scale, in another person and not known what to make of it: quite outside my previous experience with any other people, or all the relevant books I’d read. There isn’t an explanation here – it’s not a psychology textbook - but at least I know it now as something which appears related to certain types of personality, early experience, and possibly damage caused by substances, which I’d suspected but had no context for.)
Graham Lord’s writing is simply the sort that gets the job done, nothing fancy, and the wittiest bits are excerpts from Bernard’s own work. The book is likely intended to be read a bit more slowly than I did - I couldn’t stop once I’d started reading the preview - but it did start to pall in the middle. Conveniently, that was just before Bernard gave up drinking for two and a half years and became a tad dour and puritanical, which varied the narrative and kept the interest. (Incidentally, I’m sure this edition was nearer the 368 page count given for the paperback than 254 for the Kindle.)
Characters like Bernard and HST were fascinating because they were original in their contexts. But now all the kids want to write gonzo / confessional, most of them haven’t got the talent and so few journalists are getting paid for it any more, even the good ones. It’s easy to understand why these characters might seem a bit less exciting or amusing to younger people, especially those who've never had much to rebel against. But a sense of the waning public appeal of their type is difficult to judge because I'm now reading different sources with different attitudes – e.g. the moralisers so prevalent on Goodreads who judge artists primarily by the worst parts of their biographies, and on political correctness over style and wit. The people who do that often feel they are kicking against a dominant force, whereas others of us perceive them as part of one, albeit one which may have resurged after a brief liberal blip.
This article cites Bernard as the pioneer of the confessional column (I’ve heard others mentioned as such, can’t remember who) – a trend that when technology caught up, launched a hundred thousand blogs. A man who hated nothing so much as a bore (but who admitted that he’d become one as his health failed), who arguably helped start a trend which led to the decline of the term as the most absolute and damning English criticism, as per this article by the son of one of his friends.
December 30, 2025
A necessary corrective to Bernard's own Low Life: A Kind of Autobiography, because although he could be witheringly self-critical in his columns, that collection still doesn't convey precisely what a shit he was -- especially in the way he treated his many wives. On the other hand, "Just the One" doesn't really explain why this lazy, belligerent, thoroughly selfish alcoholic attracted such a circle of devoted friends. He was clearly a brilliant conversationalist when not plastered to the point of coma, but beyond a claim that he could improvise mock Shakespeare, there are few examples of sparkling banter; instead, Lord falls back on quotes and paraphrases from his published work.
This is a book for people who are already Bernard fans and want to know more about him, especially the parts of his life he ignored, sanitized or embellished in print. It's particularly good on his brief but storied stint as a horse racing correspondent and on the years around his 60th birthday, when money was coming in from the play about his life and he was staring to be looked at, somewhat bizarrely, as a national treasure.
This is a book for people who are already Bernard fans and want to know more about him, especially the parts of his life he ignored, sanitized or embellished in print. It's particularly good on his brief but storied stint as a horse racing correspondent and on the years around his 60th birthday, when money was coming in from the play about his life and he was staring to be looked at, somewhat bizarrely, as a national treasure.
March 1, 2021
Brilliant
I read this as an alcoholic who has not had a drink for 20 years. Its is a remarkable insight into the alcoholic condition and a man who made a career out of being drunk. He died at an age only a year older than I am. I do suffer from discontent but not the utter misery and deterioration that characterised Jeff's life. That he succeeded in going dry for three years and chose to drink again is so sad. A great wit but utterly unhappy human being who chose the terrible fate that was his life after about 50. I am so grateful that I have all that I have in life and feel so sad that this story is a man who did actually destroy himself and his wit. So sad.
I read this as an alcoholic who has not had a drink for 20 years. Its is a remarkable insight into the alcoholic condition and a man who made a career out of being drunk. He died at an age only a year older than I am. I do suffer from discontent but not the utter misery and deterioration that characterised Jeff's life. That he succeeded in going dry for three years and chose to drink again is so sad. A great wit but utterly unhappy human being who chose the terrible fate that was his life after about 50. I am so grateful that I have all that I have in life and feel so sad that this story is a man who did actually destroy himself and his wit. So sad.
June 24, 2020
Very entertaining
A very enjoyable read. A no-holds-barred ride through the decades where a drunk could become I hero.
Quite how he became a hero to some is questionable but Jeffrey Bernard's legacy will shine a light for anyone who's sick of 9 to 5.
How he got away with it, I don't know. But thank god he did.!!
A very enjoyable read. A no-holds-barred ride through the decades where a drunk could become I hero.
Quite how he became a hero to some is questionable but Jeffrey Bernard's legacy will shine a light for anyone who's sick of 9 to 5.
How he got away with it, I don't know. But thank god he did.!!
January 31, 2021
Terrible book. Very badly written abo it a very good writer. My grandfather!
April 25, 2007
I am a bit of a fan of Jeff's, and was lent this for my birthday (I won't go in to details about the person who 'lent' me a book for my birthday). If you ask me biographers should exhibit only one trait and that it being able to write - other than that they should effectivkly not exist for the reader. Graham Lord was this - a perfectly good biographer - but that's all I will say on him. Ie. the reason I liked this book was due to the way Jeffrey has thoughtfully filled his life with lots of adventure (ok, mainly vomiting on people at inappropriate times) and coming out with great one-liners: "Got any tatare sauce to go with that?" "Fuck you!" etc.) So basically JB's life is the thing that makes this book pleasant reading, so in a way I am recommending Jeffrey's life rather than Graham Lord's book. Although that makes me sound like being a alcoholic, heartless, impecunious, tapeworm-legged bit of a git is ok in my book. It's not. But let us not forget that Jeffrey Bernard was actually an alcoholic, heartless, impecunious, tapeworm-legged very cool bit of a git. So read it and take notes.
June 19, 2016
Good read, odious man.
April 14, 2017
Funny one
Jeffrey's life is one long road of self destruction. But it's an interesting story and very enjoyable. I strongly recommend it. After reading this book I ended up ordering the DVD of the Jeffrey is Unwell play
Jeffrey's life is one long road of self destruction. But it's an interesting story and very enjoyable. I strongly recommend it. After reading this book I ended up ordering the DVD of the Jeffrey is Unwell play
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews