Obituary: Nigel Dempster

Nigel Dempster was the doyen of gossip columnists

Though he wrote for several newspapers, it was for his work as a gossip columnist for The Daily Mail between 1974 and 2003, that Nigel Dempster will be best remembered.

So much so that in 2005, the media magazine, Press Gazette, listed him among the most influential British journalists of the past four decades.

He also became famous for a feud with the satirical magazine, Private Eye, for whom he once wrote and with whom he had a very public falling out.

In his diary, Dempster informed his readers of the celebrity comings and goings, the misdemeanours and scandals that surround the rich and famous, or as his critics would have it, the rich and fatuous.

According to his former editor, Paul Dacre, Dempster "liked nothing more than to deflate the egos of the idle rich and puncture the pomposity of the powerful. It made him one of the most talked-about figures Fleet Street has ever seen."

'Charismatic'

He concentrated, in particular, on the upper classes. Starting out as a debs' delight in the early 1960s he then teamed up with his friend, the photographer Lord Lichfield, to cover the premier social events of the time, first for the Daily Express and then with the Daily Mail, which he joined in 1971.

Dempster was the first to out Diana as Charle's future bride

The late Sir David English, creator of the modern Mail, spotted the potential of the quick-talking, charismatic Dempster and gave him his own diary page.

Such was Dempster's readership that celebrities would ensure that he was aware of the events they wanted him to publicise.

He was the first to spot Diana as being the future wife of the Prince of Wales, and, later, that she had bulimia. He was also the first to announce the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.

Dempster had the right upper-crust credentials in order to understand the kind of people he wrote about.

Born on 1st November 1941 in Calcutta, he had a public-school education at Sherborne, after which he took various jobs in the City, including a stint as a broker for Lloyds of London.

Private Eye

For three years, from 1971, he was married to Emma Magdalen de Bendern, daughter of a Count.

His second marriage was to Lady Camilla Osborne, daughter of the 11th Duke of Leeds.

Dempster knew his milieu

Dempster saved his most satirical output for the magazine Private Eye for which he wrote their Grovel column between 1965 and 1985.

However, the relationship between the Eye's editor, Richard Ingrams, and Dempster became vitriolic after Ingrams appointed Ian Hislop as the editor to succeed him.

Dempster was given the name, Nigel Pratt-Dumpster.

Dempster, it is thought, felt he should have been the choice, and various insults were exchanged through the pages of the press.

"May Richard Ingrams rot in hell," Dempster once wrote, "Just so long as he arrives there holding the hand of Ian Hislop."

Dempster retired from his Daily Mail column in 2003 but was retained by the paper until his death.

As well as his newspaper columns, Nigel Dempster was a regular broadcaster, and wrote several books. These included The Princess Margaret: A Life Unfulfilled, Heiress: The Story of Christina Onassis, and Behind Palace Doors, written with Peter Evans.

He once said "I am paid a certain sum of money to spy for my readers, to seek out the curious lives, the mistakes and the unhappiness of those who have got a privileged position."