TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/040389/04038900.026

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 6KB | 101 lines

WORLD, Page 31

SCANDALS

More Sex Please, We're British  Tattlers remake the Profumo

scandal in the tabs and onscreen


    A sultry former Miss India turned London party girl dates
prominent newspaper editors, several Members of Parliament and a
junior government minister. Using her high-level connections, she
lands a research job, complete with security clearance, in the
House of Commons. In her spare time she may have befriended an
alleged Libyan intelligence officer, a cousin of Colonel Gaddafi's.
As Professor Henry Higgins exclaimed in My Fair Lady, "How simply
frightful! How humiliating! How delightful!"

    Ever since the infamous 1963 Profumo affair, when the
revelation that the mistress of War Minister John Profumo was also
carrying on with a Soviet naval attache helped bring about the
downfall of Harold Macmillan's government, sex scandals have been
as absorbing a British pastime as royal weddings. Six years ago,
Trade Secretary Cecil Parkinson was forced to resign when it became
public knowledge that his mistress was about to bear his
illegitimate child. Sixteen years ago, Air Force Minister Lord
Lambton lost his job when photographers caught him in bed with two
prostitutes. As the tabloids breathlessly chronicled the latest
ado, political circles in London fell into that giddy state that
only a really juicy scandal can produce. Even a former Deputy Prime
Minister, Lord Whitelaw, commented sarcastically: "Very interesting
in many ways," he said of the Pamella Bordes affair, "and rather
amusing."

    Bordes burst into celebrity two weeks ago when a News of the
World reporter posing as a businessman claimed he paid the
luscious, high-living 27-year-old the equivalent of $850 to strip
naked and spend the night. Rather than fulfill his part of the
transaction, the newshound raced out to file his expose, under the
headline (pounds)500 AND I'M VERY DISCREET. Some tabloids drooled
over Bordes as a high-class call girl (the tonier papers left it
at "socialite") and hunted down her many eminent admirers,
including Sunday Times Editor Andrew Neil (quickly dubbed "Randy
Andy") and Observer Editor Donald Trelford ("Dirty Don"), as well
as Sports Minister Colin Moynihan, who escorted Bordes to the
Conservative Winter Ball. Tory M.P. David Shaw, it turned out, had
been so taken with her talents that, with the help of fellow Tory
M.P. Henry Bellingham, he hired Bordes as a researcher in the
House.

    For her 15 minutes of fame, Bordes went into hiding in Paris.
But when her businessman husband was tracked down there, he
explained that theirs was a marriage of convenience to help Bordes
escape arranged matrimony in India. However titillating, the tale
had yet to live up to the epic proportions of the Profumo case.
Bordes' liaisons didn't seem all that dangerous. One newspaper even
labeled the Bordes affair a mere "storm in a B cup."

    Then the Evening Standard discovered an alleged Libyan
connection. Bordes, trumpeted the paper, had made frequent trips
to a posh Paris hotel, where a man alleged to be Gaddafi's cousin,
Ahmed Gadaff al Daim, reportedly a major in the Libyan security
service, also stayed. The unconfirmed tip elevated l'affaire Bordes
to a possible matter of national security. Respectable newspapers,
including the Sunday Times and the Observer, began covering the
story. In the House of Commons, shocked M.P.s -- or at least those
fortunate enough never to have been photographed with the lady --
demanded an investigation into how she had passed a
security-clearance check. Bordes, who has not spoken to the press
since the scandal broke, is said to be willing to sell her story
for $1.75 million, leading at least one newspaper to speculate
sourly that she had invented the Libyan love affair to boost her
fee.

    Nevertheless, parallels with the Profumo case proliferated,
fanned by the fortuitously timed release of a controversial new
movie, Scandal, based on the Profumo-Keeler affair. The film has
been playing to packed audiences in London movie theaters. A
Thatcher aide haughtily dismissed any suggestion of resemblance,
protesting, "As far as we can ascertain, there is no political
dimension at all to this."

    The involvement of some journalists with Bordes gave the affair
a rather novel dimension. Some papers took it lightly. The Sun,
owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Sunday Times, edited by
Bordes' former beau Neil, polled British national editors to find
out if they too had trysted with Bordes. The Sun later issued an
apology to Mail on Sunday Editor Stewart Steven, who complained
that by leaving him out, the Sun had impugned his manhood. Observer
Editor Trelford, a married man, was less amused and bitterly
accused the Sun of overblowing his friendship with Bordes to draw
attention away from Neil's affair with the lady. Sunday Telegraph
Editor Peregrine Worsthorne, himself free from innuendo, joyously
lambasted the other "supposed classy, upmarket, quality" papers for
their editors whose fondness for the "company of bimbos" desecrated
the dignity of the Fourth Estate.

    The second time around rarely lives up to the original. The
Profumo scandal ended in a tragedy worthy of the Laclos novel Les
Liaisons Dangereuses: call girl Christine Keeler landed up in jail,
Profumo resigned in disgrace, and the man who introduced them, Dr.
Stephen Ward, committed suicide. The Bordes story will continue to
amuse or offend, but it isn't likely to topple the government --
or the Profumo affair's secure place in British lore. Compared with
Profumo, the Bordes affair seemed a watered-down remake, what the
Burt Reynolds movie Switching Channels was to the Cary Grant
classic His Girl Friday.