At the risk of turning this into an obituary column for extremely old men: Everybody knew what headlines to run when announcing the death of John Profumo. The Scandal Which Rocked Britain; The Man Who Brought Down The Macmillan Government. Profumo, the Tory defence secretary caught sleeping with a call girl who, rather inconveniently, was sleeping with a Russian spy at the same time. And that happened in 1963. Imagine spending over forty years, nearly half a century, with something like that pressing down on your life. Profumo escaped into charity work, which was very worthy. But I bet nearly every new person he met still tried not to snigger and muttered "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" (Mandy Rice Davies' reaction to his initial denial of the affair) to themselves.
The Yorkshire Post found another angle to it. The Post caters for far-right Yorkshiremen who enjoy reading about decapitations in Barnsley and crooked Labour councillors in Doncaster, a surprisingly large market. It's not a paper I'd buy myself. My parents take it though and I was round having dinner with them tonight. Profumo may have shagged prostitutes, endangered national security and lied about it all in Parliament. But when he was finally nailed he went with dignity; and that, according to the Yorkshire Post, is something New Labour politicians today can learn from. Upon reading this I involuntarily uttered the F word in an extremely loud voice, right in front of my sweet white-haired mother and father. Right wing opinions: as bad for family values as they are for everything else.
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