TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040389/04038900.026

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6KB | 110 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.