English model and crime victim Norman Scott was BOTD in 1940. Born Norman Josiffe in Kent, his father abandoned the family soon after his birth. After leaving school, he worked as a stable groom (and live-in lover) for Brecht Van de Vater, through whom he met Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe. He left de Vater’s house in 1961 and suffered a nervous breakdown, spending time in a psychiatric hospital. After discharging himself, he went to the House of Commons to ask Thorpe for help. The two began an affair, with Thorpe installing Josiffe in his London flat. In 1962, Josiffe threatened to kill Thorpe and commit suicide. Interviewed by police, Scott gave a detailed statement of their affair (which at the time was a criminal offence), producing letters as evidence, which the police buried. After leaving Thorpe, he changed his surname to Scott, and was briefly married to Angela Myers, with whom he had a son. He then moved to Wales where he worked as a model, forming a relationship with Gwen Parry-Jones, who later committed suicide. He made repeated attempts over a decade to contact Thorpe asking for financial help, ignoring Thorpe’s various attempts to frighten him into silence. In 1975, Thorpe (by this time the leader of the Liberal Party) is thought to have asked his associates to arrange Scott’s murder. A paid assassin, Andrew Newton, tried unsuccessfully to shoot Scott, killing his pet dog, a Great Dane called Rinka. On his release from prison, Newton revealed to the press that he had been paid to kill Scott, causing a national scandal. Intimate letters from Thorpe to Scott were published in 1976, forcing Thorpe to resign as Liberal leader. In 1979, Thorpe and his associates were put on trial for conspiracy to murder. Scott gave evidence at the trial, admitting his homosexuality and insisting that he and Thorpe had been lovers. Thorpe was acquitted after an infamous summing-up by trial judge Sir Joseph Cantley, who called Scott “a fraud, a sponger, a whiner, a parasite”. Acquitted but with his career in ruins, Thorpe retired from politics, continuing to insist his innocence and that he and Scott had never been lovers. Scott also disappeared from public life, living quietly in rural England and Ireland. His reputation was salvaged following a series of books published after Thorpe’s death, confirming the relationship and details of the murder plot. John Preston’s 2016 book A Very English Scandal was adapted successfully for television by Russell T. Davies, starring Ben Whishaw as Scott (who won a Golden Globe for the role) and Hugh Grant as Thorpe. Scott currently lives on a farm in the south of England.