At the end of 1980 not only did Sue divorce him [a imagem diz, em legenda, tratar-se do dia do casamento de Jeffrey e Sue Bernard] but he crashed the car and lost his Colonel Mad column in Private Eye. Then his old friend Frank Norman died.
The car crash, when Bernard hit a Lambourn plumber's van in the narrow lane up to Crane's Farm, was his fourth shunt in eighteen months and he was so terrified of killing somebody one day while drunk that he finnally gave up driving for good. He had already driven home drunk one night from the Swan at Great Shefford on the wrong side of the road after dark with no lights on and had crashed into the cabbage patch at the Queen's Arms at East Garston, narrowly avoiding killing a goat. He sold the Datsun and needed to find some way of getting down to the village from Crane's Farm each morning without having to pay for an expensive daily taxi. His solution was magnificently simple. Each day in the village he posted himself an envelope bearing a 17p First Class stamp. The next morning the postman would drive all the way up the lane to Crane's Farm to deliver the envelope. When he arrived Bernard would be standing at the gate to cage a lift back into the village, where he would immediately post himself another 'letter'. For 17p a day he had ensured a daily taxi service. Once safely in the village of East Garston Bernard would repair to the Queen's Arms at about 9 a.m., where Tony Lovell would leave the back door open so that Bernard and some of his thirstier racing cronies could help themselves to a few heart-starters from behind the bar.
It was certainly a miserable time for Bernard. He was now drinking vodka because 'it's the only drink that doesn't make my pancreas scream' but it did not manage to diminish his drunkeness. Keith Waterhouse once attended a dinner with Bernard in London after which he realised that Bernard was so drunk he could never get back to Lambourn alone. They repaired to the Regent Palace Hotel at Piccadilly Circus, where Waterhouse tried to book him for the night. The recepcionist took one look at Bernard and declared that there was no room at the inn.
Bernard was leaning on a pillar. He glared at the recepcionist. 'Give us a room, cunt,' he ventured.
This attempt at sweet-talk was unsuccessful and Waterhouse was left with no option but to take Bernard home.
Just the One, The Wives and Times of Jeffrey Bernard, de Graham Lord, págs. 244/245.
