Thomas Sheridan, the father of the more famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan, devoted himself in the 1760s to 'rubbing away the roughnesses of the Scottish tongue'. His volume of Lectures on Elocution was once a great hit in Edinburgh. The other Thomas Sheridan, known as Tommy to the tabloids and to friends and enemies alike, is the former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, and his efforts to represent himself in a defamation case against the News of the World has been providing the city with a theatrical spectacle the Edinburgh Festival will struggle to equal. Unlike past Sheridans, Tommy appears to harbour no fear of the tongue's roughnesses, and the courtroom drama surrounding his attempt to dismiss the rowdy newspaper's allegations (of adultery, three-in-a-bed romps and visits to Cupids, a swingers' night-club in Manchester) led to no end of homespun and vividly worded disclosures - the kind that politicians don't sell by the yard these days.

LRB 17 August 2006 | PDF Download