[images and captions
added by this website]Levin,
the scourge of the powerful and pompous, dies at
75

By George Jones,
Political Editor, The Telegraph

BERNARD Levin, the political commentator and broadcaster who played a key role in the wave of anti-Establishment satire that debunked leading figures of the 1960s, has died at the age of 75.

He poured scorn on politicians and prominent people in public life during four decades as a columnist and critic for newspapers, The
Spectator magazine and the satirical television show That Was The Week That Was.

Few senior politicians escaped being savaged by his acerbic and barbed wit, which at times verged on abuse.

He called Sir Alec Douglas Home, who was briefly the Conservative Prime Minister, a “cretin” and “imbecile”. Harold Macmillan secured elevation by “a brutality, cunning and greed for power normally met only in the conclaves of Mafia capi”. Michael Foot, the former Labour leader, was “half-blind and at least a quarter crippled” and “unable to blow his nose in public without his trousers falling down”.

In the early 1990s he began a column by using
109 consecutive adjectives to describe the then
Conservative government – starting with
“worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent” and ending with “indefensible, unpardonable and scabrous”.

Sometimes his writings had unfortunate personal consequences. Once he was thrown out of a Blackpool hotel for likening the town to an elephant’s anus.

When Lord Chief Justice Goddard died aged
94, Levin wrote a strongly-worded attack which so angered the legal establishment that he was blackballed from the Garrick Club.

Herbert Kretzmer, one of the writers on
TW3 and a fellow theatre critic, said that in private Levin was entirely the opposite of his public image. “He had an innate kindness and unspoken generosity and had a wide circle of friends. He liked the good things in life.”

[Bernard Levin] LEVIN, the son of a north London tailor, lived in a three-room flat, along with an array of stuffed cats. “I am a cat man,” he used to say, “but you can’t keep cats in a flat. I live on the top floor.”

In his youth, he was attracted by the Left and communism. But by the 1960s he had become a vehement anti-communist, backed the American war in
Vietnam, and later became a fervent supporter of
Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister.

Lord Gilmour, the editor of The
Spectator in the 1950s, when Levin came to prominence writing a witty and disdainful political column under the byline Taper, said yesterday he was “the first and probably the best” of the modern parliamentary sketch writers.

Levin wrote theatre reviews for the Daily
Express and the Daily Mail. In 1971 he began a regular column in The Times. His subjects were varied but he was always a passionate supporter of the underdog and an enemy of the high, the mighty and the pompous.

Levin wrote the column until 1997, when ill health forced him to scale back his commitments.
Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, said: “Bernard
Levin was one of the most gifted and influential columnists to write for The Times.

“The beauty of his language and originality of his thought ensured that he had an enthusiastic audience far beyond the borders of Britain.”

Although he never married, Levin featured in gossip columns in the 1970s when he began a five-year relationship with Arianna
Stassinopoulos, the Greek hostess and writer.

Friends said Levin bore with fortitude a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.