Former British PM John Major Admits Affair

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, September 29, 2002

Former British PM John Major Admits Affair

After a series of Cabinet sex scandals helped topple his government, former Prime Minister John Major admitted Saturday to a four-year affair with a colleague while both were married.

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After a series of Cabinet sex scandals helped topple his government, former Prime Minister John Major admitted Saturday to a four-year affair with a colleague while both were married.

Edwina Currie, a flamboyant backbench lawmaker and later health minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, was quoted by The Times newspaper as saying she and Major began a relationship in 1984, while he was a Parliamentary whip, and ended it shortly after his promotion in 1988 to Thatcher's Cabinet.

Major, a Conservative, was prime minister from 1990 until 1997. He was long considered one of Britain's most personally upright politicians.

The paper quoted Major as saying that his wife, Norma, had known of the matter for many years and forgiven him long ago.

"It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared it would be made public," he was quoted as saying. "Neither Norma nor I has any further comment."

Major, 59, made no other public comment Saturday. News of the affair made the front pages of most tabloid newspapers.

Currie, 55, a showy Conservative politician who was never publicity shy during her years in Parliament, described the relationship in personal diaries excerpted in The Times and soon to be published as a book, "Edwina Currie Diaries, 1987-1992." The Times also interviewed her.

Major stepped down as Conservative Party leader after Tony Blair's Labor Party won the 1997 election in a landslide. He gave up his Parliamentary seat last year.

Source: Agencies

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