If there is any one person responsible for the birth of celebrity culture, it is the late, great gossip columnist Nigel Patton Dempster (1941-2007).
From the early sixties to the mid-eighties as the editor of “Dempster’s Diary” on the Daily Mail, Dempster was the man perfectly placed and qualified to record – and accelerate – the end of the age of deference. For many years, for many people, Dempster was the Daily Mail. His diary, with its scurrilous revelations about the great, the good, and the not-so good, was the only page to read.
In his kipper ties and natty blazers, he brought a raffish sparkle to a dull decade, exposing the infidelities of Harold Pinter and Lady Antonia Fraser or James Goldsmith and Annabel Birley, paying tipsters like the bouffant Lord Lichfield with crates of champagne, and sometimes breaking stories of national importance – the collapse of Princess Margaret’s marriage, the resignation of Harold Wilson.
But, for all his convivial charm, his canny ability to infiltrate the smart set, Dempster led a rather strange, lonely life, marred by broken relationships and an on-off battle with drinking. In this riveting book, Tim Willis charts Dempster’s bibulous journey through old Fleet Street and society as a tragic-comic romp. In so doing, he provides a portrait of an age.

‘Yes I’m trivial. But life’s trivial’ – Nigel Dempster

About the author

Tim Willis is a freelance writer and editor. He has worked for most of Britain’s national newspapers and some of its glossier magazines. He is t

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