Scandals More Sex Please, We're British

By Alessandra Stanley

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.

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London