Edwina Currie

Edwina Currie née Cohen (born 13 October 1946) is a former British Member of Parliament. First elected as a Conservative Party MP in 1983, she was a Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over the controversy over salmonella in eggs. By the time Currie lost her seat in 1997, she had begun a new career as a novelist and broadcaster.

Early life

Currie was born in South Liverpool, England to an Orthodox Jewish family, although she has identified herself as Jewish only in the cultural sense — she does not subscribe to what she calls "religious mumbo jumbo".^[1] A pupil at Liverpool Institute High School for Girls,^[2] she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne's College, Oxford University; subsequently, she gained a MA in economic history from the London School of Economics.

Member of Parliament

From 1975 to 1986, she was a Birmingham City Councillor for Northfield. In 1983, she stood for parliament as a Conservative Party candidate, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. Frequently outspoken, she was described as "a virtually permanent fixture on the nation's TV screen saying something outrageous about just about anything" and "the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation."^[3]

In September 1986, she became a Junior Health Minister, but was forced to resign in December 1988 after she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs. The claim, that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella"^[4] sparked outrage among farmers and egg producers, and caused egg sales in the country to rapidly decline.^[5] This caused particular anger in Northern Ireland where egg production is a significant part of the economy — and at the Christmas party of the Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland that year the featured dish was curried eggs. To make amends, in 1990 she began the National Egg Awareness Campaign.

In 1991, she was the first Conservative MP to appear on the BBC topical panel show Have I Got News For You. Currie subsequently appeared again in a special episode commemorating the release of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs, opposite fellow Liverpudlian (and Liverpool Institute alumnus) Derek Hatton.

During the 1992 General Election campaign, Currie famously poured a glass of orange juice over Labour's Peter Snape shortly after an edition of the Midlands based television debate show Central Weekend had finished airing.^[6] Speaking about the incident later, Currie said "I just looked at my orange juice, and looked at this man from which this stream of abuse was emanating, and thought 'I know how to shut you up.' ".^[6]

After the 1992 General Election, she declined a request from prime minister John Major to take up a position as Minister of State for the Home Office, as it would have again involved working with Kenneth Clarke, who had been Secretary of State for Health in 1988 and who had just been appointed Home Secretary.^[7]

In February 1994, she tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to lower the age of consent for male homosexual sexual acts to 16. This amendment was defeated by 307 votes to 280, although a subsequent amendment resulted in the reduction of the homosexual age of consent from 21 to 18; final equalisation was achieved in 2000.

In June 1994, she contested the European Parliament UK seat of Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, but lost the seat to Labour's Eryl McNally by 94,837 votes to 61,628 votes.

Currie lost her parliamentary seat in the 1997 General Election. For five years (1998–2003), she hosted a late-evening talk show on BBC Radio Five Live, Late Night Currie.

Personal life

In 1972, Edwina Cohen married accountant Ray Currie in Barnstaple, they had two children and divorced in 1997. On 24 May 2001 in Southwark, she married retired detective John Jones whom she had met when he was a guest on her radio programme in 1999.^[8]

Author

Currie is the author of six novels: A Parliamentary Affair (1994), A Woman's Place (1996) She's Leaving Home (1997), The Ambassador (1999), Chasing Men (2000) and This Honourable House (2001). She has also written four works of non-fiction: Life Lines (1989), What Women Want (1990), Three Line Quips (1992) and Diaries 1987–92 (2002), which revealed an affair with former prime minister John Major. She remains an outspoken public figure, with a reputation for being "highly opinionated",^[5] and currently earns her living as an author and media personality.

Media

From the time she lost her seat in 1997, Currie has maintained a presence in the media. For five years an eponymous phone-in programme ran on BBC Radio Five Live, Late Night Currie.^[9] In 2002 she moved to HTV, presenting the television programme Currie Night until 2003. Since then, she has appeared in a string of reality television programmes, such as Wife Swap, in which she and her second husband John swapped places with John McCririck and his wife, Jenny. She has also appeared in the reality cooking show Hell's Kitchen with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes, both in 2006.^[10] Currie was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!. She won Celebrity Mastermind on 23 June 2004, specialising in the life of Marie Curie. She also won All Star Family Fortunes on 3 January 2009. She also recently appeared in Channel 4's Come Dine With Me in February 2009 where she finished 3rd.

Charity work

In 2004 she took part in a sponsored cycle ride across Poland, near to the area where ancestors of hers lived, for Marie Curie Cancer Care, although Curie is not one of them.^[11]

Edwina Currie at Nightingale House, 2009

Affair with John Major

Currie's Diaries (1987—92), published in 2002, caused a sensation, as they revealed a four-year affair with John Major, which began in 1984 and ended in 1988. The affair started while she was a backbencher and Major was the government whip in Margaret Thatcher's government. After Major's promotion to Chief Secretary to the Treasury the relationship ended, but the two remained friends. Currie apparently ceased the affair when it became dangerous and impractical owing to the presence of bodyguards who had to be avoided.^[7]

Major in a statement was "ashamed" of the affair, and had privately revealed the matter to his wife. However, Currie admitted to being "in love" with him for years afterwards,^[12] and that he was "the love of her life".^[13] Weeks after revealing the affair though, she publicly criticised Major, accusing him of sexism and racism, and being "one of the less competent prime ministers".^[14]

The admission came after years of denial of any affair while in office, a successful libel action against playwright David Hare, who had compared a sexually voracious murderer, played by Charlotte Rampling in his film Paris by Night (1988), to an "Edwina Currie-like" figure, and Currie's writing of several novels with raunchy themes, such as A Parliamentary Affair.^[5]

Discography

As part of the 2009 TV Show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Currie teamed up with Declan Donnelly and two other celebrities to release a cover version of the Wham hit song, "Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)".

References

External links

• Official website
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Edwina Currie
• Extracts from her diaries
• Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics: biography
• Major and Currie had four-year affair, BBC News Online, 28 September, 2002