The dying wish of a ladiesman ’

THERE is, I can reveal, a poignant postscript to the death of brilliant TV producer and writer Harry Thompson, which draws together all the elements of his turbulent personal life.

There was a deathbed marriage to his long-term partner, who had nursed him through his terminal illness, and a moving reconciliation with his former wife, whom he had abandoned for a shortlived affair with a glamorous younger lover.

Just hours before he died aged just 45 on Monday, Thompson married literary agent Lisa Whadcock in hospital, with the full blessing of his family.

To Thompson, who was behind a string of cutting-edge TV shows such as Have I Got News For You and Da Ali G Show, this was a poetic squaring of his life’s circle.

There was also a rapprochement with ex- wife Fiona Duff — the mother of his two children — who had publicly lambasted him when he left her.

Thompson also made his peace with writer Victoria Coren, for whom he left his marriage and who was famously dubbed ‘ the trollop’ by a vengeful Duff.

The dying wish of Thompson, who was also the biographer of actor Peter Cook and Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams, was that all the women in his life be friends.

This aspiration, I can disclose, was fulfilled before he died from inoperable lung cancer in London on Monday night.

Remarkably, Thompson was well enough as recently as Sunday to take his children — Bill, nine, and Betty, 11 — to a Christmas Fair at London’s Olympia, before dispatching them back to their mother in Scotland. Says Fiona: ‘The children spent a lovely week with Harry. He was fantastic with them and had a last surge of energy before he finally went into hospital.’

It was Fiona, 44, owner of an Edinburgh- based PR company, who caused Thompson immense embarrassment after she discovered his affair with Victoria, daughter of humorist Alan Coren. A niece of Lord ( David) Steel, Fiona set about exacting revenge on the man who left her and her children in a ‘ diary of a divorce’, in which she described in full detail the collapse of her marriage.

It was described as ‘ corrosive and compulsive, like having a ringside seat at the worst car crash’.

FIONA said last night: ‘ At the time, it was revenge served piping hot. But more recently we were getting on fine. I’ve remarried and I’ve had another baby, Emma, who is now four. Harry had been up to Edinburgh and sat on my sofa sharing a beer with my new husband, Callum.

‘Lisa has been up as well and she got on fantastically with the children. I fully supported the marriage. It was in the hospital on Monday afternoon, with Harry’s agent and his dad Gordon as witnesses. He died just after 9pm.’

For her part, Victoria Coren tells me: ‘Harry had such a lively mind, full of energy and romance and comedy and ideas; it’s almost unbearable to think of it just going silent.

‘ But at the same time, I think it’s lovely that Harry and Lisa got married, because they loved each other very much.’