To celebrate 25 years of the country’s most successful gossip column, this is both Dempster’s professional autobiography and a behind-the-scenes revelation of all the great stories the diary broke.
Dempster’s People will be a fabulously readable account of Nigel Dempster’s working life and of his famous Diary, and will include: early beginnings with the Hickey column, moving rapidly on to 13 years’ association with Private Eye, Richard Ingrams and Peter Cook, focusing on the legal struggles with Goldsmith; the world of Jonathan Aitken and his lovers; how the Playboy Club lost its gaming licence; the writ from Harold Wilson, together with famous writs over the years (‘Writs are the Diarist’s Oscars’, as he is famous for saying); his relationship with Christina Onassis and how the Royals, from Princess Margaret to Princess Diana, engaged with the Diary; how the Guinesses sought his help and how Earl Spencer became a Diary ally; how the Diary became an adjunct of the sporting world and in particular the Sport of Kings; and much, much more of the spiciest gossip column in town through twenty-five years of its history.
For twenty-five years Dempster's Diary has been a British institution, sending tingles of embarrassment through the heart of Society and frissons of delight among the public at large. Covering the intimate lives of the rich, the famous and the simply notorious, the Diary has always been required reading for all who want to know what's really going on and who's really doing what. In this book, published to celebrate the Diary's anniversary, Nigel Dempster gives the reader unfettered insight into some of the most intriguing intrigues he has covered during its lifetime.
From the 1960s and his personal slant on the Burton/ Taylor marriages to the 1990s and his insider's take on the Al Fayeds, Dempster reveals himself as the world's leading gossip. Here he lets us in on who his tipsters are – from Jonathan Aitken to Earl Spencer. He gives us the background to stories on James Hewitt, Davis Mellor and Sir James Goldsmith and lets us have the details of the loves and loathings of Sita White and Sarah Ferguson. With the spiciest snippets on how the rich try to place some stories in the Diary and try to stop others, and the truth behind how the Diary came to take its internationally renowned place at the centre of Britain's social whirl, 'Dempster's People' will be one of the most scandalously entertaining books of the season.
NIGEL DEMPSTER entered Fleet Street in 1963, working for the 'Daily Express' and then moving to 'The Daily Mail', where he was American correspondent before beginning his world-renowned Diary in 1973. He became diarist for the 'Mail on Sunday' in 1986 and broadcasts regularly for BSkyB, ABS-TV (in the US) and for Canadian and Australian television stations. He is the author of 'HRH The Princess Margaret- A Life Unfulfilled'; 'Heiress: The Story of Christina Onassis'; 'Nigel Dempster's Address Book'; and with Peter Evans, 'Behind Palace Doors'.
