Sally made Bridget Jones look a paragon of restraint

After his wife posed for a photo wearing just a bedsheet, he hit the roof

JOHN BERCOW’S wife Sally has proved to be an equally controversial figure in the national life of Britain.

Bercow’s friend Julian Lewis MP, spotting the young Sally Illman at a Conservative students’ conference in 1989, poked Bercow in the ribs. ‘That’s the most beautiful girl at this conference,’ he said.

During a disco later, the friends danced with their new acquaintance. ‘It was fairly obvious she was much more interested in John,’ says Lewis.

‘I don’t think I ought to detail anything more about the remainder of that evening,’ he continues. ‘It’s fair to conclude that they got together on that first occasion in a significant way.’

Sally had attended Marlborough College but later said: ‘I didn’t really fit in with those girls in Alice bands and everyone coming from a house with a long drive.’

She then dropped out of Oxford and worked in PR.

Not long after they got together, Sally accompanied Bercow to constituency events as he began campaigning to become an MP.

Initially, Bercow was largely unaware that Sally was, as she puts it, ‘an alkie’.

‘We were apart for long periods and I just didn’t know. When we went to the pub, she drank more than I did,’ he said in 2010.

For her part, Sally said: ‘With alcoholics, you think of people who have gin over breakfast. I wasn’t like that. But I think formally I would be called an alcoholic.’

She stopped drinking in 2001 after attending Alcoholics Anonymous, taking it up again years later.

In the last week of June 2002,

Bercow had proposed to her at a restaurant near Parliament.

So in love was he, it’s said that he sold his Buckinghamshire cottage, his home for four years, because of its low ceilings and doorways. He stands 5ft 6in while Sally is 5ft 11in. The couple married later that year in the Commons crypt.

Six months after Bercow became Speaker, his wife gave her first media interview and spoke about her days at university, her struggles with alcohol and her relationship with her husband.

Such was her candidness that the interviewer, Anne McElvoy, questioned how the conservative Bercow got together with a woman ‘who makes Bridget Jones seem a paragon of restraint’.

In February 2011, Sally contributed to a newspaper article in which she described how ‘sexy’ she found living under Big Ben. The article was accompanied by a picture of her wearing a bed-sheet, looking out of their living quarters over the Thames.

Sally had told the broadcaster Iain Dale of the article and he asked what her husband made of it. ‘Oh, I haven’t told him. Do you think I ought to?’ she responded.

Dale says: ‘I think his reaction was pretty volcanic. She just seemed to have no idea that this could be quite detrimental to him.’

Sally later said: ‘When I told my husband that I posed in a bedsheet, he kind of hit the roof. I really genuinely didn’t expect the furore that it caused, but because of who I’m married to, it’s not acceptable – apparently. Well, sorry, no, I’m an individual in my own right. I am not my husband.’

Long previously, she had renounced her Conservative sympathies and come out as a dyed-in-the-wool Blairite.

Several years into Bercow’s Speakership, their marriage was going through perhaps its most difficult phase.

Sally had also been seduced by the lure of fame. ‘It did go to her head a bit,’ says family friend and MP Gillian Keegan. ‘Becoming a public figure is a big deal.’

In 2015, it emerged that she had been having an affair with her husband’s cousin, Alan, a commercial litigation lawyer.

She had moved out to a mews house in Battersea, where Alan joined her while Bercow was campaigning for the General Election.

The affair was said to have lasted for almost a year. The pair bonded over ‘a mutual appreciation of fine wine’, it has been reported. But the Bercows decided to try to save their marriage and Sally moved back to the Palace of Westminster.

The Bercows have always felt their marriage is worth fighting for. ‘We’ve had periods of turbulence,’ Bercow understatedly said last year.

‘I didn’t feel a great certainty, but I thought it was worth trying. I do [love her a lot], and I’m happier together than apart.’