It is sometimes hard to remember there once was a time when the punishment for perjury in politics was to be stripped of office and that for lying to the judiciary was six months in jail. Quaint, really, in these post-Clintonian times to imagine that could ever have been the case, but in those woebegone, unenlightened days Jack Profumo, Britain's Secretary of State for War in the Macmillan government, was actually sacked for telling a lie, and fun-loving Christine Keeler really did go to jail, though, contrary to popular legend, these two events were not entirely related. In fact, they had nothing to do with each other. Simply put, Christine fled the country before the trial of a West Indian who had slashed another West Indian who had imprisoned and raped her; and whoever it was doing the mischief managed to link the stories even though Profumo hadn't seen his "bit of totty" in ages - but who was to know?
In March 1963 and under parliamentary privilege, Dick Crossman and Barbara Castle, with the best and most noble intentions, of course, aired the rumour that a government minister had something to do with the fact that a chief witness in an attempted murder case had vanished. The Secretary of State for War responded by saying that any suggestion that he was in any way connected or responsible for her absence from the trial at the Old Bailey was wholly and completely untrue. Unfortunately he went on to state: " There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler." That was the famous Lie and as far as one can ascertain, Stephen Ward, Soviet spy and osteopath to the aristocracy, banked on him telling it. Profumo was being perfectly truthful in saying he had absolutely no involvement with the court case. Hell, he hardly knew Christine, except in the most casual carnal sense and really there was no "impropriety " either unless you consider a married man having sex with a pretty, featherbrained party girl a bad thing. Stephen Ward's cleverness was in putting forward the fact that she'd also "given one" to some oaf from the Russian secret service (who did it on Ward's instructions) as evidence that the "security of the nation" was in grave danger. Naturally, Ward's hands appeared clean and, equally naturally, Lord Denning set out to prove they were not. Now, hot off the presses after all these years, comes Christine Keeler's ghosted autobiography, The Truth At Last, and a more self-serving, cautionary tale would be hard to imagine.
IS HER ghost writer, Douglas Thompson, on her side at all, I wonder? Aren't ghosts supposed to curb the worst excesses of their subject? We are treated to statements like: "For millions of people it was me who invented sex"; "I have always been free with my love"; "I have always denied being a prostitute. It is true I have had sex for money but only out of desperation"; "I was young and lively and attracted to men and I could always enjoy relationships without longterm commitments."
In other words, darling, you were a bit of a slapper, but then one man's slapper is another man's sexually liberated woman. So what? Nobody's perfect. Christine had grown up without much parental concern in a converted railway carriage. Her step-father, obviously obsessed with her astonishing beauty, gave her Hell and she rebelled by having sex with various boyfriends at a time when it was not at all the thing to do.
She was 17 when she fled to London and got a job at Murray's club in Soho as a topless dancer. 'Twas there she met Stephen Ward and his offer to leave her horrid cold-water bedsit to share a flat with him on a purely platonic basis was hard - nay, impossible - to resist. He was 47, charming, urbane and seemed to know just how to get on in society. The courtesy "cottage" at Cliveden was actually a rather magnificent house on the grounds and Ward had it at a peppercorn rent in lieu of treating Bill Astor's back, hurt years earlier in a hunting fall. How could a girl resist? Parties and pleasure, old men ogling and Ward never so much as making a pass. They were to be a team not a couple. She was to be his "little baby" from the moment he saw her onstage, he said.
"Will you step inside my parlour?" said the spider to the fly/"'Tis the prettiest little parlour that you did ever spy". And yes, I'm sure she did encounter both Anthony Blunt and Roger Hollis at the flat in Wimpole Mews and I'm not at all surprised that Ward would have been quite happy to have her bumped off after she had halfwittedly served her purpose. What astonishes is Keeler's complete inability to understand, even with hindsight, her own part in her self-destruction.
Her stint in Holloway was for perjury in the Lucky Gordon case. Lucky had attacked her violently while she was in the company of two other West Indians and she says it was only because she wanted to "help other people" that she denied the pair were under the bed at the time.
Even when she became insanely notorious, unlike Mandy Rice-Davies who has done very nicely ever since thank you, she hadn't the wit to capitalise on it. She was an easy prey, however, for the low life who did. Like all those early pop stars who signed away their royalties, she too fell into the clutches of a grasper, now dead, and none of the money swilling about seemed to swill her way. Any that did, she immediately blew with blithe disregard for the future.
Her major grievance in the book is her insistence that having told him everything she knew, Lord Denning let her down. Well, he would, wouldn't he? He ignored evidence that would have embarrassed the Establishment and instead concentrated on getting Ward for living off immoral earnings, in the process downgrading rather a fascinating character into a mere pimp. Ward killed himself during his trial, leaving a note saying how sorry he was to disappoint the vultures and Keeler says she has never "cried so deeply" since.
Like a late-night re-run of one of those old Bond movies starring in no particular order: Emil Savundra, Peter Rachman, Tony Snowdon, Ringo Starr, Patrick Lichfield, Screaming Lord Sutch, Lionel Bart, Warren Beatty, Yehudi Menuhin, Paul Raymond and Vidal Sassoon (that's enough ancient Sixties names - ed), it's a sordid messy tale with not an ounce of literary merit - but utterly fascinating all the same.
Jeananne Crowley has been touring the country in recent weeks with a run of King Lear which finishes tonight, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin