Special Guest Blogger: Jeremy Thorpe

In the mid-1970s British politics was rocked by a scandal which tell us much about 1970's Britain.
It involved the Old Etonian leader of the Liberal Party (me) who asked a friend to organise the assassination of his gay lover. The friend asked a carpet salesman, who asked a fruit machine salesman, whose friend hired an airline pilot – who ended up murdering the lover’s dog instead. As i said, it was the 70's.
I entered Parliament in 1959 and homosexuality was still stigmatised and only a few years earlier another peer had been imprisoned for ‘consensual homosexual offences’ but nobody suspected me as i had been maried twice and i made sure my 'secret' same-sex encounters happened out of view in public lavatories.
I met Norman Josiffe and after a brief and sweaty fling, dropped him soon afterwards but Norman wouldn’t let go and kept badgering me for money and threatening to expose our affair with some letters he had of mine so I began to wonder about bumping him off.
I mentioned this to David Holmes who was the assistant Treasurer of the Liberal Party although he wasn't keen on my idea of breaking Normans neck, or poisoning his drink in a pub and throwing his body down a mineshaft but as i was on the verge of becoming the leader of the Liberal Party, we put it on the backburner.
The newspapers loved me and described me as a breath of fresh air and in the 1974 election my Liberals won 20% of the vote and fourteen seats but Norman was still there and making threats so we returned to pressing on with the murder plan.
As David Holmes didn’t have anyone in his Filofax under A for Assassin, he asked John le Mesurier who was a carpet salesman from South Wales, who knew a man called George Deakin, who supplied slot machines who had a friend, Andrew ‘Gino’ Newton, who was willing to give it a go.
Gino was an airline pilot and the plan was to meet Norman and tell him his life was in danger and to come with him to a place of safety so they climbed into the car along with Normans dog and when they got to a quiet country lane, Gino got out the car, shot the dog and then went to shoot Norman but the gun jammed and Gino panicked and run off, leaving Norman convinced that I had just tried to have him assassinated.
Luckily, few people believed him and the blame was put on the South African intelligence services until 1976 when the Sunday Times printed some of my letters to Norman and i was arrested.
At my trial the judge acquitted me and called me 'a public servant of many years standing’, while Norman was 'a scrounger, parasite and hypocrite’ because what saved me was that Norman had struck many newspaper deals to receive more money if i went down.
My reputation never recovered and in the 1979 election all the voters that had come to us previously flocked back to the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher and i resigned and made several attempts at a comeback but it wasn't to be and i passed away from Parkinson's with a perfectly clean criminal record and leaving the Liberal Party in the safe hands of Paddy 'PantsDown' Ashdown who carried on the fine Liberal tradition of being a bit pervy.