Edwina Currie (born 13 October 1946 in Liverpool) is a former British Member of Parliament. A pupil at The Belvedere School and Liverpool Institute High School for Girls, she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne's College , Oxford University; subsequently, she took a Master's degree in economic history at the London School of Economics. From 1975 to 1986 she served as a Birmingham City Councillor. In 1983 she stood for parliament as a member of the Conservative Party, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire.
In 1986 she became a Junior Health Minister, but was forced to resign in 1988 after she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs that was criticised for being hysterical and over-cautious. In the 1997 general election she lost her parliamentary seat. For five years (1998 - 2003) she hosted a successful late-evening talk show on BBC Radio Five Live.
She is the author of six novels: A Parliamentary Affair (1994), A Woman's Place (1996) She's Leaving Home (1997), The Ambassador (1999), Chasing Men (2000) and This Honourable House (2001). She has also written four works of non-fiction: Life Lines (1989), What Women Want (1990), Three Line Quips (1992) and Diaries 1987-92 (2002).
Her diaries caused a sensation, since they revealed she had had a four-year affair with John Major, who was later Prime Minister, starting in 1984 and ending in 1988. During a live television interview on RTÉ's The Late Late Show in 2002 she famously slipped up when, discussing her recent marriage, she referred to her new husband as "John Major", a mistake which made international headlines and which is regularly shown on TV stations worldwide as a notorious faux pas.
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Last updated: 05-14-2005 21:43:54
