British Author Admits Taking Heroin on Prime Minister John Major's Plane

INTERNATIONAL May-June 1997

British author and journalist Will Self told The Independent newspaper that he snorted heroin on former British Prime Minister John Major's election campaign jet. "So I was smacked out on the Prime Minister's jet, big deal," said Self, an admitted heroin addict, whose novels include My Idea of Fun, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis and Scale. He had originally denied the allegations, but in an interview with The Independent on April 13, he said they were true. The Observer newspaper, which employed Self as a restaurant and television critic and occasional columnist, fired him after being told of the incident by another journalist. In his article about his day with Major's press party, published in The Observer on April 13, Self wrote ironically, "So sparse is the content of the campaign, we were reduced to manufacturing news among ourselves" ("Novelist admits taking heroin on Major's plane," Reuter, April 19, 1997).