Edwina Currie

Edwina Currie (born 1946 in Liverpool) is a former British Member of Parliament. She studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at 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 Birmingham City Councillor. In 1983 she ran for parliament as a member of the Conservative Party, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. In 1986 she became Minister of Health, but was forced to resign in 1988 after warning about salmonella in British eggs. In the 1997 general election she lost her seat. Since losing her parliamentary seat she has hosted a late-evening talk show on BBC Radio Five Live.

She is the author of six fiction books: 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 non-fiction books: 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 the (not yet) Prime Minister John Major, starting in 1984 and ending in 1988. During a live television interview on RT�'s The Late Late Show in 2002 she famously slipped up when discussing her recent marriage, referring 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.

Edwina Currie

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