His English education gave him enough self-confidence to call strangers "old boy" and to keep (and wear) a large selection of public school ties. Hurry up already! In fact, the Viscount had seriously miscalculated. Nevada delays election result until Friday with just 51,000 votes left to count as Biden's... Arizona Secretary of State prolongs results until tomorrow, saying 450,000 still need to be counted, putting... Nevada gonna give you up! However, the relationship between the Eye's editor, Richard Ingrams, and Dempster became vitriolic after Ingrams appointed Ian Hislop as the editor to succeed him. He moved to The Daily Mail, where he was a correspondent in the United States before Sir David English, its longtime editor, gave him the gossip column in 1973. Days before the event he predicted that Harold Wilson would resign as Prime Minister. In county drawing rooms up and down the land his column was indignantly excoriated - yet discreetly devoured. Moment foul-mouthed female anti-Trump protester, 24, is arrested in NYC for spitting in cop's face and... Biden is expected to win in Nevada despite having less than 1% lead over Trump and the final results are not... Trump leads Biden by 2.6% in Pennsylvania with 89% of votes counted and the final results may not come until... Trump's lead shrinks in Georgia from 18,000 to 13,000 as race narrows with just 50,000 votes left to count. Born on 1st November 1941 in Calcutta, he had a public-school education at Sherborne, after which he took various jobs in the City, including a stint as a broker for Lloyds of London. However, he squabbled with the new editor Ian Hislop after a slovenly libel about the Tory cabinet minister Cecil Parkinson. This led to repeated encounters with police breathalysers. By his second marriage, Dempster had a stepdaughter, Emily Kate Godolphin Harris and a daughter, Louisa Beatrix. Asked to bare his skin for a police doctor's needle in order to yield a blood sample, Dempster once responded by removing his socks and instructing the physician to sink his syringe into his big toe. He could no longer carry on ­working and his final column in the Mail appeared on October 7, 2003. Princess Margaret was won round in 1970 when Dempster told her how he knew that a bishop's mistress had moved into the episcopal quarters because he saw a 40D cup bra dangling on the washing line. At his funeral, the priest declared that Dempster might have to spend a million years in purgatory — and paused just long enough to shock the congregation, before adding that, in eternity, a million years would pass in the snap of a finger. The Mail appointed a Royal correspondent who was soon breaking many stories that would once have been natural Dempster fare. “It made him one of the most talked-about figures Fleet Street has ever seen. Apart from the falls, there were other worrying signs that ­something was amiss. Gossip columnist Nigel Dempster has died after a long illness, Get your need-to-know Dempster contributed for several years to Private Eye, helping to write the venomous Grovel column. The so-called personalities had their own ­magazines — such as Hello!, soon ­followed by OK! From 1971 to 1974, Nigel Dempster was married to Countess Emma Magdalene de Berdern, the eldest daughter of Count John Gerard de Bendern. Dempster, who was 65, was credited with creating the modern newspaper gossip column. It made him one of the most talked-about figures Fleet Street has ever seen.". Now people ring up with their version of the story first. We will all miss him.”. Other efforts, such as Nigel Dempster's Address Book (a 1990 society glossary) can nowadays be most easily found on the secondhand book tables at provincial fêtes.

Straying peers and medallioned playboys came to fear a call from the dauntless, dapper Dempster. Even Dempster had stopped going to many of the glittering soirees where he would once have been relied upon to enliven proceedings. This appalling illness — diagnosed four years before Dempster’s death at 65 — can incubate for up to 15 years, manifesting itself slowly, then ­suddenly accelerating. Dempster's daughter was at the same school as one of the Goldsmith children. He could no longer eavesdrop so easily, and at parties he found himself pestered by other diarists. EXCLUSIVE: Four out of 10 young people say they will BREAK Covid lockdown rules this Christmas - more than... London's second wave of coronavirus is SLOWING: Official data shows infections are falling in 19 of 32... Covid-19 cases are dropping in under-40s in England but still rising for older people, official data shows... 'Covid can kiss my back-end, I'm giving my mum the send-off she deserves! "Good on yer, Nigel," went up the Romany cry. Nor had he lost his ­ability to charm the great and the good, while ­revealing matters that many of them would have preferred to sweep under the carpet. ‘All those trashy people. Nigel Richard Patton Dempster was born in the city of Calcutta, India, on November 1, 1941. ‘As we arrived, she said to me ­good-humouredly: “Remember who I am and where you are.” Only then did she release my hand.’ The anecdote was vintage ­Dempster. At a party to celebrate a veteran sports ­writer’s 40 years in service, ­Dempster took a tumble on the steps outside, ­sustaining a twisted ankle, a black eye and a dent to his forehead. But old mates came anyway and he was never short of female ­company. Dempster responded not only by reprinting the estimate but also, for the convenience of kidnappers, by listing Lambton's address and telephone number. Of course, he also benefited from it himself. First with the society news: Dempster announced the engagement of David Cameron, a 'would-be MP', to Samantha ­Sheffield - then a rather scruffy pair. Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers and editor of the Daily Mail, said: “Nigel was not only a treasured friend and a brilliant colleague, but also one of the best diary writers Fleet Street has ever known. With his kipper ties, rakish sideburns and marathon lunches, the effects of which would later be burned off in the squash courts, Dempster felt at home in an era when men thought nothing of goosing pretty girls and listening to the share tips of well-placed City friends.

Dempster suddenly found himself ridiculed as "Dumpster" and the Greatest Living Englishman epithet was now prefixed by "former". He sold vacuum cleaners and worked for London caterers. He could be flip in describing his vocation, as when he said, “There is a holiday in my heart when I discover another marriage breakup.”, He could also profess a rather high sense of mission: “If the trade of gossip columnist is trivial, then all of life is trivial.”, Nigel Dempster Dies at 65; Made Gossip Respectable, Press Association, via Associated Press, 1975. Dennis Barker.

"; Nigel Dempster was the doyen of gossip columnists, Dempster was the first to out Diana as Charle's future bride, How the world's oldest clove tree defied an empire, Why Royal Ballet principal Sergei Polunin quit, Tourists flock to 'Jesus's tomb' in Kashmir. Many nights Dempster would retire to his digs simply to watch television and take an early bed. Starting out as a debs' delight in the early 1960s he then teamed up with his friend, the photographer Lord Lichfield, to cover the premier social events of the time, first for the Daily Express and then with the Daily Mail, which he joined in 1971. Dempster was given the name, Nigel Pratt-Dumpster. His second marriage was to Lady Camilla Osborne, daughter of the 11th Duke of Leeds. His old flame Tessa Dahl was a regular. It was Dempster who was the first to report that the rock star Bryan Ferry and his posh wife Lucy were to separate and Dempster who broke new ground by recording the It girl phenomenon in the shape of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tamara ­Beckwith and Lady Victoria Hervey. And he kept his readers updated on the Duchess of York’s crumbling ­marriage and her unwise friendship with the Texan Steve Wyatt, as well as fingering chef Marco Pierre White for his tardiness in ­paying maintenance to his ex-wife. The best was his 1981 biography of Princess Margaret. He also became famous for a feud with the satirical magazine, Private Eye, for whom he once wrote and with whom he had a very public falling out. His father, Eric Richard Patton Dempster, was an Australian mining engineer. He rarely wrote about Princess Diana, whose life was the most popular subject of gossip magazines. He next worked for Lloyd’s, the insurance giant, and was a stockbroker. Although both his editor and ­proprietor had witnessed the ­incident — and were reportedly ‘aghast’ — the diarist claimed he had injured himself playing squash. As well as his newspaper columns, Nigel Dempster was a regular broadcaster, and wrote several books. In 1971, he also began writing for the Daily Mail. In 1963 he joined the William Hickey column of the Daily Express as a junior reporter and soon started making a name in the ill-lit milieu of newspaper diaries. His best decade was the 1970s. He was now drinking more, writing less, and spending thousands on bad horses, often his own. What he didn’t know then was that his body was already incubating a disease that would eventually cut short his career and reduce him to a shadow of his former self. He was a well-known newspaper columnist. Nigel Richard Patton Dempster was born in India on November 1 1941, the son of an Australian mining engineer who was already 50 when the infant arrived.

Nigel Dempster. — which all but kissed the tips of their fingers. To some, Dempster was a puckish observer of the rich, a ringmaster of equalising social ridicule. Margaret, Duchess of Argyll observed that "they used to wear two hats, one that of a journalist, one that of a friend.