ACCIDENTAL ICON: How I Dodged a Bullet

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Author: NORMAN SCOTT

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9781529370294

Norman Scott had his 15 minutes of world fame in 1979 during the notorious Jeremy Thorpe trial, and he returned to the public eye more recently with a spate of films about the scandal. Growing up with horses, Norman Josiffe, to use his real name, took a job as a stable apprentice in the early 1960s where his boss, Van, introduced him to MP Jeremy Thorpe, showing him compromising letters from Thorpe which Scott later stole. Meanwhile Thorpe told Scott to get in touch if he ever needed help. After a row with Van, Scott left the stable without his National Insurance cards which he needed for future employment, then headed for Westminster to ask Thorpe to help him retrieve them. According to Scott, Thorpe took him to his mother's house where he raped him, and when Scott wrote a 17-page letter to Thorpe's mother describing their relationship, Thorpe's friend Peter Bessell was employed to keep an eye on Scott and pay him a retainer. There followed ten years during which Scott, increasingly mentally fragile, had a series of dead-end modelling and stable jobs as Thorpe rose on the political scene. During this time Scott married and divorced, fathering a child with his wife Sue and also with another female lover, although he was primarily homosexual and writes of liaisons with such famous people as the gay artist Francis Bacon. Things came to a head when Andrew Gino Newton took Scott onto the moors in his car, killed his dog Rinka and pointed the gun at Scott. Fortunately the gun jammed. Newton, who described himself in court as a hit-man, was jailed but the story refused to go away and finally in 1979 Thorpe and three friends were tried for conspiracy to murder, with Scott being described by the judge as a warped, hysterical fraud, a scrounger, a whiner, and a spineless neurotic. Thorpe was acquitted but his career was finished. In the book Scott admits to lies and deceptions but maintains that the core story is true. Read it and decide for yourself. 328pp, colour and other photos. Remainder mark on page edges.