POLITICALLY INCORRECT!
No Sleep Till Bromley and Chislehurst All Election Night Long (Political) Party Animal Ten O’Clock Booze
BRITISH showbiz is renowned for its hard-living hellraisers. The wild antics of Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed and Keith Moon became the stuff of legend as they drank bars dry, smashed up hotel rooms and left trails of destruction in their wake. These celebrity bad boys lived fast and died young, and they certainly knew how to party while they were here.
But now there’s a new name to add to that rollcall of showbiz nutjobs – Professor John Curtice. For, in a new biography by best-selling Nottingham writer Lobthorpe Swayfield, the seemingly mild-mannered BBC election night analyst is revealed as a wild hedonist who lives to party 24 hours a day!
“It’s true,” says Swayfield, who has also written tell-all biographies about other election presenters including Peter Snow, David Butler and Professor Robert McKenzie. “To look at Curtice on polling night with his dusty grey suit, wirerimmed specs and unruly grey hair, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt.”
“But what viewers don’t realise is, in real life he’s a fucking animal, if you’ll pardon my French.”
And now, as he embarks on a nationwide tour of the Mansfield area to publicise his fully illustrated 32-page book King of the Swingometers – The Truth About Professor John Curtice (Swayfield Publishing, £0.49), Lobthorpe is lifting the lid on the debauched 70-year-old polling-night-telly libertine and senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research.
In these exclusive extracts, he offers us a sneaky peek behind the mask at the real Professor John Curtice and his wild life in the fast lane of BBC election night coverage.
The great rock’n’roll hellraisers are renowned for their ability to remain on the go for long periods whilst indulging their insatiable appetites for thrills. Back in 1978, Rolling Stone Keith Richards famously avoided kipping for an incredible nine-days straight whilst on a marathon bender. But when it comes to sheer endurance and stamina, even the addled Gimme Shelter plank-spanker would have to admit that Curtice has him beat.
As soon as polls close late on election night, the BBC expert goes into action, regularly staying awake and alert long enough to analyse the latest voting trends on live TV late into Breakfast Time news the following morning. Unlike Richards – who famously fuelled his marathon wideeyed sessions with a copious intake of hard drugs – the BBC psephologist regularly mainlines three or four fullstrength coffees on election night. Not only that, it is rumoured that when the cameras aren’t looking, wild man Curtice will take the occa”sional
backstage ‘sharpener’ of half a can of Tizer, two or three mint imperials, or a Viennese pastry.
Almost without exception, our favourite rock stars are partial to the attentions of the opposite sex, and they don’t have to venture very far to get it! Kiss frontman Gene Simmons is rumoured to have had intimate relations with between 4,000 and 5,000 backstage groupies over the course of his musical career, whilst Led Zeppelin drummer Jon ‘Bonzo’ Bonham once saucily stuck a fish up a fan’s minnie-moo for backstage kicks.
But when it comes to women, Sir John – knighted by the Queen in 2018 for services to the social sciences and politics – has them all licked, as he has been married to Lisa – a regional curate in Renfrewshire – for many years. Mrs Curtice de scribes herself as a big fan of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the pair apparently enjoy long walks, taking an active part in the life of the diocese, and watching Newsnight.
Sixties libertine Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 hit Purple Haze was a song about the experience of getting ‘high’ on LSD and ‘smack’ – the dangerous drugs habit that cost the 28-year-old his life in 1970. What’s more, the Woodstock star wasn’t the only VIP to be fatally tempted by the lure of illicit narcotics. Over the years, any number of household names – from Janis Joplin and Keith Moon to Sid Vicious and Dee Dee Ramone – have crashed and burned after falling victim to the bright lights and seductive ‘buzz’ of the drug-fuelled showbiz high life.
But one man who has proved he has the stamina to keep going long after others fall by the wayside is Sir John Curtice. During live coverage of the EU Referendum result on the BBC News channel, Curtice felt soreness in his throat and feared he had a cold coming on. “I boiled the kettle to do myself a Lem-Sip in the green room,” he told Radio Times. “But when I went to the cupboard there were no sachets because Clive Myrie had had the last one and put the empty box back. In the end I had a couple of Tunes and it was okay.”
The showbiz lifestyle and heavy drinking go together like fish and chips, and once the stars start sinking the hard stuff, they simply don’t know how to stop. Late Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan famously kept his liver