An Anti-Abortion Drunk

Jeffrey Bernard (long-stumbling literary drunk, long-standing author of The Spectator's "Low Life" column, subject of the long-running play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell) dedicated a column to "the heroes of 1985." One of them, the "late lamented Michael Dempsey."

Last week a colleague told me that on the occasion of Michael’s last visit to Ireland he stayed in a town which boasted some thirty pubs. Within two days, Michael was considered to be a poet, gentleman and scholar in five of them and barred from four others. , . .

One of his last public appearances was made at the Lamb and Flag in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Faced by a bevy of the Right to Choose Party, he said, ‘I’m glad to see that you are all wearing your Right to Choose badges. This means that you are all opting to have abortions. In that case, you will not be producing children who are as hideous and revolting as yourselves.’

Jeffrey Bernard, Low Life - Irreverent Reflections from the Bottom of a Glass