KEY POINTS:
Terry Major-Ball, brother of former British prime minister John Major. Died aged 74.
Terry Major-Ball first came to the attention of the nation in November 1990 on the night that his younger brother John became Prime Minister.
Reporters gathered outside his house in Surrey, hoping for some insights into the life of the new Tory leader who had emerged to succeed Margaret Thatcher.
When he went outside to speak to ITV's News at Ten in a dazzling pool of light, it was a disaster. "My face looked bloated and I seemed drunk," he wrote in his autobiography Major Major, even though he said he had not had "anything stronger than a cup of tea".
The book received an ecstatic reception. "Exquisitely funny", wrote Auberon Waugh and Private Eye said it "makes you proud to be English. No foreigner could dream of such a masterpiece." Although the book was long-winded, he was totally loyal to the PM, and kept to himself some explosive secrets, such as Major's affair with Edwina Currie.
- NZPA
