Nigel Dempster

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dempster was Britain's best-known gossip columnist, and contributed many items to the satirical magazine "Private Eye". He had a major falling-out with its editor, Ian Hislop, after one of his stories turned out to be untrue and an entire issue had to be withdrawn and reprinted. Subsequently, Dempster published many defamatory stories about the magazine and its previous editor, Richard Ingrams, whose marriage was failing as a result of his then wife's manic-depressive condition. Finally, in 1992, Dempster published a story suggesting that Ingrams had been having an affair with Pamella Bordes, an Indian-born photographer much in the news at the time. His basis for the story was an anonymous letter he had received, whose contents he made no attempt to check out. Unfortunately for Dempster, the author of this prank letter turned out to be Ingrams himself; Hislop, who was in on the joke, let it be known that he had told Ingrams that Dempster wouldn't fall for it as "no-one is that stupid". Dempster became a national laughing-stock for some time, and his career declined steeply as a result. Curiously, he and Ingrams were reconciled when Dempster was dying, and Ingrams paid him a warm obituary tribute in "The Independent" newspaper in 2007.

Nigel Dempster was born on November 1, 1941 in Calcutta, Bengal, British India as Nigel Richard Patton Dempster. He was married to Lady Camilla Osborne and Countess Emma Magdalen de Bendern.