Joke about Rinka the Great Dane, whose shooting led to the trial of former Liberal leader, hits cutting room floor
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David Cameron has dropped a joke about the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe from his conference speech. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The great Michael White wrote in Tuesday's Guardian about the jokes doing the rounds at the Conservative conference.
One joke, at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, combines Jeremy Thorpe's conspiracy to murder trial in 1979 with the plight of the cat stolen by the wife of a Lib Dem MP.
It turns out that the joke was dreamt up by David Cameron who had intended to use it in his conference speech on Wednesday. But the joke has hit the cutting room floor. The prime minister had planned to say:
They used to shoot our dogs and now they just steal our cats.
The first part of the joke is a reference to Rinka, the famous Great Dane belonging to Norman Scott, who was shot dead on Exmoor in 1975. Of course Thorpe did not shoot Rinka. Andrew 'Gino' Newton was convicted for the illegal possession of a firearm and an intent to endanger life.
The incident eventually led to Thorpe standing trial in 1979 on charges of conspiracy to murder Scott who had claimed to be his lover. Thorpe was acquitted.
The second part of the joke is a reference to Christine Hemming, the wife of the Lib Dem MP John Hemming who was convicted of stealing a kitten from the home of her husband's lover.
Cameron decided to pull the joke earlier this week, long before Catgate erupted on Tuesday when Kenneth Clarke and Theresa May differed over whether a Bolivian national had resisted deportation on the grounds that he owned a cat.
The prime minister, who has a sharp sense of humour, thought that making a joke about Thorpe, 82, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease would be in poor taste.