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Jeffrey Bernard's Biography

 
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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 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."



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