Jeffrey Bernard's Biography
Jeffrey Bernard was born on 27 May, 1932 and died on 4 September 1997.
Jeffrey Bernard wrote a column in The Spectator called "Low Life", which began in 1978. In it he detailed his many, often alcoholic, escapades.
A theatrical production with Peter O'Toole playing Jeffrey Bernard hit the West End. It was called 'Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell'.
In the collection of 'Low Life' columns, 'Reach for the Ground: Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard' he describes the genesis of the play:
"Then in 1989, Keith Waterhouse announced one afternoon in The Groucho Club that he intended to write a play based on my Spectator columns to be called 'Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell', so confirming my suspicion that he was stark-raving mad. What he was was clever. The play, mostly about my drinking, made drink paradoxically a thing of secondary importance to the very first taste of self-esteem I had experienced off a school cricket field or later in a lady's chamber."
