The newspapers made the most of Profumo affair, says Jonathan Sale


THEKEELER INST T


he caption of a cartoon, depicting a news vendor, read: “Sorry, sir, we have no Standards. As with many highly topical gags that were spot on when they


were published (in 1963, in this case), it needs a footnote, which is that few of those involved in the ‘Profumo affair’ were exactly overburdened with (lower case alert) standards. “The Profumo affair was made in Fleet Street more than in Wimpole Mews,” declares Richard Davenport-Hines in An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo. The second address was where cabinet minister John Profumo (and others) had enjoyed wild parties and assignations with model Christine Keeler which, the author continues crossly, “aroused in Fleet Street a frenzy of ferocity”. It was a story to die for and someone did – not a journalist but one of the leading characters. This is not to say that the Evening Standard


was particularly guilty, but it certainly made the most of the tale of the cabinet minister, 21-year- old Christine Keeler, top people’s osteopath Stephen Ward – and a Soviet ‘diplomat’. However, coming out with several editions


during the day as it did, it was the go-to paper for anyone wishing to keep on top of the drama. No wonder the news vendor ran out. You could buy the latest edition, have lunch and, when you left the restaurant, pick up a another edition with further sensational details of low scandals in high places.


This is the scandal that defies the adage that if


you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there. No one old enough to read the newspapers during the early part of that decade can forget the tales about the ‘party girl’, whose lovers included the secretary of state for war and Russian naval attaché Eugene Ivanov. Then there was the swimming pool at Cliveden,


Lord Astor’s Buckinghamshire estate, where Ward had a getaway cottage and where ‘Jack’ Profumo first clapped eyes on Keeler with or without her swimming-costume (reports vary). A friend of mine chanced upon the moment


18 | theJournalist


when the papers had their first chance to tiptoe towards the explosive story. Now a retired high court judge, he recalls:


“I was a very junior pupil when the affair first went to court. One day, I went down to the Old Bailey just out of curiosity and went into number 1 court to see how it worked. It was a case of a West Indian involved in some sort of fight at a smart house in central London.” The Telegraph ran this story on the front page. In December 1962, John Edgecombe, one of Keeler’s ex-lovers, had attempted to shoot out the lock of Steven Ward’s flat where Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies (aka Randy Mice-Davies) were staying. He was now on trial. On March 15 1963, the day he was sentenced, the Daily Express chipped in with a traditional nudge-nudge: next to a story about the defence minister, it printed a photo of Miss Keeler, apparently naked apart from a strategic towel.


Christine takes the chair (back to front)


AN ICONIC image of the sixties was the shot of Christian Keeler sitting naked astride what was at first sight thought to be a classic Arne Jacobsen chair. It was used as publicity for a proposed biopic entitled The Keeler Story. This shoot (in Peter


Cook’s satirical nightclub The Establishment) took place between the denial in March 1963 by cabinet minister John Profumo of an affair with Keeler, and his


admission in June that he had lied to the House of Commons. The chair was


actually a copy bought for five shillings, the movie never made it to the screen (Scandal, a later film, did) and Keeler’s pose is perfectly discreet. The film’s producers


had demanded that a reluctant Keeler strip for nude snaps: it was in her contract. “The situation


became rather tense,”


The paper declared to Lord Denning, author of the official report on the whole saga, that this juxtaposition was a complete coincidence. The whispers reached the House of Commons on March 22 when opposition MPs brought up the rumours of a dangerous liaison between a Miss Christine Keeler and ‘a cabinet minister’ – and a Soviet official. In a wonderful example of if the cap fits wear it, John Profumo, who had carefully not been named by the Labour members, made a statement. There was, he declared, “no impropriety


whatever” in his acquaintance with the aforementioned young lady. Furthermore, he would sue anyone making remarks to the contrary. He and his wife, actor Valerie Hobson, who had starred in the David Lean’s classic movie Great Expectations, then went off to the races with the Queen Mother. Lobby correspondents were briefed that the


recalls photographer Lewis Morley. He saved the day and


Keeler’s modesty by suggesting she sit back to front on the chair. His final shot was the one we know and love.


The pose, with a


different woman in the chair, was used as publicity for Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical Stephen Ward, named after the osteopath known as the ‘fixer’ who fixed up fun-loving girls with girl-loving toffs. It closed after less than


four months. The photo of the


bottom of the actual chair reveals the names – but not the bottoms – of others who have sat astride it: David Frost, Joe Orton and Barry ‘Dame Edna’ Humphries. The actual chair


has a place of honour in the V&A.


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