General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

John Bercow's family history by Andrew Gimsom.

Bercow’s paternal grandfather, Jack Bercowitch, was a Jew from Romania who arrived in London at the age of 16, in 1900, worked first as a gas fitter and then as a furrier, and in due course opened a shop. Two of his sons, Ralph and Charlie, set up a business called Bercow Motors, in Warren Street in central London, which prospered until the late 1960s, when the council painted yellow lines on the road outside their showroom. Charlie Bercow married Brenda Bailey, a legal secretary who was not by birth Jewish, and in 1963 she gave birth to their son, John Simon Bercow. So when Bercow describes himself as “the Jewboy son of a taxi driver”, this is, as Friedman observes, “something of an over-simplification”. It would be more accurate to describe him as the son of a small businessman, which is probably one of the things that made him a natural Conservative. But when he was still quite young Bercow Motors did indeed close down, his parents got divorced, and his father started driving minicabs