Faking your own death to escape debtors and being a Czech spy puts former Labour MP John Stonehouse in a league of his own when it comes to political notoriety.
His colourful life was detailed in a Channel 4 documentary last week and for some people in the North East it stirred memories of another Labour party MP at the time whose antics also appeared to be straight from a work of fiction.
John Ryman, represented the working class mining constituency of Blyth as it was then from 1974 to 1987 by which time it had been re-named Blyth Valley.
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He was a fox hunting, pro-hanging London barrister with a taste for the high life which was part funded by mistresses and former wives – often without them knowing.
While Stonehouse disappeared after faking his own death on a Miami beach in 1974, Ryman was known to 'disappear' from view for long periods which tried the patience of Labour bosses. On one occasion the party's Chief Whip Bob Mellish went on the radio to ask listeners to get in touch if they had spotted him.
Ryman was educated at a Quaker boarding school and studied law at Oxford before embarking on a successful career as a barrister.
Intellectually gifted, he went on to become the first prosecuting counsel for the Inland Revenue. He also possessed great charm, which he used in later years to its fullest.
It wasn’t long before the local party was wondering what it had let itself in for. He was for capital punishment, and it came as a bit of a shock when a newspaper revealed their man had a home they knew nothing about in Hexham where he kept horses to ride in the local hunt.
Ryman married five times in all, each ending in divorce. His fifth wife, Nicola, was the wealthy widow of a company director. Cash of hers he said had been invested in a high-yield Swiss bank account was actually spent on a horse, a Jaguar car, and holidays on the Orient Express.
Before he married Nicola he narrowly escaped prosecution from the family of a previous mistress after she died when they discovered a handwritten receipt from Ryman for £14,000 he said was invested, again, in a high-yield Swiss bank account. After months of legal wrangling the family got the money back.
In April 1992 Ryman was convicted of defrauding two women of their life savings. He had pretended to be the director of a Swiss bank and told the women that they would get 22.5% interest, but in fact paid the money to his ex-wife for maintenance payments. Ryman was given a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence.
After serving his sentence, Ryman disappeared from the public eye and died in 2009.
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