Scandal Of The Century!

Ben Whishaw and Hugh Grant star as Norman Scott and Jeremy Thorpe MP in the true story of sex, betrayal, politics and murder that shocked 1970s Britain…

NEW DRAMA

A Very english Scandal

Sunday, BBC1 HD, 9pm

If you were around in the 1970s, it was difficult to miss one of the biggest scandals in British political history when Jeremy Thorpe MP, the leader of the Liberal Party, was accused of trying to have his former lover Norman Scott murdered.

Thorpe was acquitted in 1979, though many people believe that the MP was guilty of the charges.

Now, the pair’s love affair and how it became a political bombshell is played out in the BBC1 drama A Very English Scandal, which has been adapted from John Preston’s book by Russell T Davies. ‘The whole tale is funny and dark, but essentially it’s about a middle-aged man falling in love with a younger, attractive guy,’ says Davies. ‘My job was properly to work out why these mad things happened.’ 

In his first role on British TV in two decades, Hugh Grant plays the dashing, witty and promiscuous Thorpe, while Ben Whishaw portrays Scott – nicknamed ‘Bunny’ by his older benefactor.

COVER UP 

The three-part drama, directed by Stephen Frears, goes back to the pair’s first meeting in the early 1960s. Their affair saw Thorpe providing his lover with money and even a London flat where the two could meet privately.

The relationship went sour before Thorpe became Liberal Party leader, and he became desperate to cover up the relationship at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

According to police, that paranoia would result in a murder plot being hatched in 1975 when a hitman botched an attempt to kill Scott.