Trial of Christine Keeler/The Profumo Affaire

I did not watch the final episode of the trial of Christine Keeler though old-fashionedly I recorded it (I’m the over 50 generation the BBC no longer want) but I did see Tom Mangold’s documentary Keeler, Profumo, Ward and me.

This was more about him – as its title suggests – than the Profumo affaire.

The promised previously unseen material in reality added very little.

In the absence of the minutes of  meeting (now  conveniently disappeared) with Henry Brooke, Home Secretary, Roger  Hollis (Head of M15) and the Commissioner of the Met – and the fact that all the protagonists  have passed on it’s difficult to find any new material.

The fact is that no one emerges well from the scandal.

The Establishment did round on Stephen Ward, abandoned by the friends he craved.  The prosecution evidence against Ward was deeply flawed.

Even to a non-lawyer like me it’s blinding obvious that if you are a successful osteopath you cannot be living on immoral earnings. As the streetwise Mandy Rice Davies put it: “He would not have much of a living. We were always skint.”

The Press indulged in cheque book journalism – the sort which George Carman successfully discredited in the Jeremy Thorpe trial.

Stephen Ward committed suicide. Christine Keeler went inside. Jack Profumo did charity work in Toynbee Hall, his political career finished.

It was an unedifying time in British politics though a significant factor in the decline of the Conservatives in the early 60s.

So what is its ultimate legacy?

Pretty young girls, an ageing politician, sex, the rich Cliveden set – it’s not surprising that this has resulted in films and TV series, most of them second rate.

I doubt now if we will learn anything new.