Nigel Dempster: Britain's king of gossip

NIGEL Dempster, a leading gossip columnist in London, where fascination with the dirty washing of princes, playboys and pretenders unites all classes , died on Thursday, aged 65.

For three decades, Dempster's column in The Daily Mail appeared five days a week, and from 1986, six days a week.

He broke the news of the imminent break-up of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall; Prince Andrew's engagement to Sarah Ferguson; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's becoming a grandmother; the marriage and break-up of Prince Charles and Diana; and Diana's bulimia.

Vivien Merchant, wife of playwright Harold Pinter, read about her husband's affair with Lady Antonia Fraser in Dempster's column.

When Dempster retired in 2003, the daily Independent said he "practically invented high-society gossip as a newspaper staple" and Tina Brown, the writer and editor, called him "the boss of gloss".

Some of his scoops were deliciously newsworthy, as when he wrote that the House of Commons was ordering nearly $30000 worth of German crockery just as the government was waging a "Buy British" campaign.

And some were important by any measure. In December 1975, he wrote that Prime Minister Harold Wilson intended to resign, which he did three months later.

Wilson sued because Dempster had used the word "tired" to describe him. "Tired" was a common euphemism for drunkenness. The suit was dropped after Wilson resigned.

Dempster professed to welcome legal attacks, saying lawsuits "are the Oscars of my profession".

He pooh-poohed those who suggested gossip was trivial, saying that because of British laws on secrecy, Fleet Street's journalistic practices and readers' habits made gossip a principal way that "actual information gets through to the proletariat".

In 2005, Press Gazette, a media magazine, named Dempster one of the 40 most influential journalists in his country over the last four decades.

Dempster, the son of an Australian mining engineer, was born in India in 1941, and educated at a boarding school in Devon, England. In its online obituary on Thursday, The Times of London reported that he had cheated in his entrance exam.

He worked as a stockbroker, sold vacuum cleaners and worked for London caterers.

His first newspaper job was for The Daily Express in 1963. He moved to The Daily Mail, where he was a correspondent in the US before being given the gossip column in 1973.

He also wrote a column, "Grovel", for the irreverent magazine Private Eye, in which he referred to himself as GLE, for Greatest Living Englishman.

Dempster is survived by a stepdaughter and a daughter. - © ( 2007) The New York Times