Mandy Rice-Davies has died.

[GA Russell]

At the time, I thought that Mandy Rice-Davies was much cuter than Christine Keeler. Perhaps some of our British friends would like to weigh in on their memories of the issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/world/europe/mandy-rice-davies-profumo-affair-figure-obituary.html?_r=0

[BillF]

Well, you've got to be pretty old to remember it! In 1963 I was in the second year of a three-year degree course in English at Leeds University. The reading list was massive and I spent most afternoons in the city's reference library, exiting at about 5 p.m. when the newspapers hit the streets with the latest Profumo affair headlines. I still remember seeing "Stephen Ward Dead" on a news vendor's billboard. Come to think of it, it was just three months before the JFK assassination, which of course I remember, too.

[paul secor]

If she had been American, she might have hooked up with JFK. Or, at another time, with Clinton.

[Big Beat Steve]

Well, you've got to be pretty old to remember it! In 1963 I was in the second year of a three-year degree course in English at Leeds University. The reading list was massive and I spent most afternoons in the city's reference library, exiting at about 5 p.m. when the newspapers hit the streets with the latest Profumo affair headlines. I still remember seeing "Stephen Ward Dead" on a news vendor's billboard.

When it comes to remembering things, you sometimes associate the strangest situations. I had been aware of what the Profumo affair essentially was (though it was before my tmie - I was 3 then) since the mid-70s through some book on British beat music that presented the musical events of the time against a brief background of topical events in Britan that happend in the respective year.

But what made the Profumo affair and its year stick in my mind forevermore came in 1984 or so when - in one of my scrapyard sprees for parts for the 50s classic car I owned then - I rummaged through the driver's cab of some dilapidated early to mid-50s 1 1/2 ton truck and, much to my surprise, unearthed a crumpled, yellowed 1963 German tabloid where the latest developments of the Profumo affair made the headlines on the title page. Which goes to show how long that truck must have been sitting in that yard ...

[kinuta]

I remember Mandy Rice Davis, Christine Keeler and the Profumo scandal.

I was too busy kick starting my career of excessive teenage hedonism for it to make much of an impact.

Scandal - Michael Caton-Jones (1989) is an interesting film about the affair.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098260/

Edited December 20, 2014 by kinuta

[Chuck Nessa]

I miss her.

[JohnS]

Fascinating at the time. High society, sex, politics, Russian spies.

[Bill Nelson]

Mandy's Maxim for Young Achievers: "My life has been one long descent into respectability."

[BillF]

Mandy's Maxim for Young Achievers: "My life has been one long descent into respectability."

Some of these life achievement one-liners are great. British football idol George Best said when bankrupt:

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered."

[Dave Garrett]

At the time, I thought that Mandy Rice-Davies was much cuter than Christine Keeler.

That's certainly the case now (or at least it was prior to Ms. Rice-Davies' death).

[Chuck Nessa]

We didn't really need to see that.

[AllenLowe]

just to correct the record and re: the somewhat snide reference to JFK above; the rumors of his dalliances while in the White House are just that; there is really no credible proof, and most of the sources for such originate, and I am not kidding, from CIA-related sources and assets. And JFK was at odds with this wing of the government from nearly the beginning of his term. Judith Campbell Exner? A liar with no documentation or third-party confirmation that she ever even met JFK; even stupider was the woman a few years ago who claimed, as a teenager, to be sitting by the White House pool listening to JFK speak about his political problems.

sorry to digress but this stuff needs to be corrected.

Edited December 21, 2014 by AllenLowe

[Dan Gould]

just to correct the record and re: the somewhat snide reference to JFK above; the rumors of his dalliances while in the White House are just that; there is really no credible proof, and most of the sources for such originate, and I am not kidding, from CIA-related sources and assets. And JFK was at odds with this wing of the government from nearly the beginning of his term. Judith Campbell Exner? A liar with no documentation or third-party confirmation that she ever even met JFK; even stupider was the woman a few years ago who claimed, as a teenager, to be sitting by the White House pool listening to JFK speak about his political problems.

sorry to digress but this stuff needs to be corrected.

Allen, I've noticed you make these statements in the past and I just can't ignore them. I don't care that you are so adamant in your belief that Oswald didn't act alone or really was a patsy, or whatever the hell you think of the assassination.

But JFK being slandered with false charges of screwing whoever he felt like screwing whenever the urge struck? His own damn widow knew about it. She even wrote about it in letters to others. You don't trust contemporaneous accounts of his infidelities?

And what I can't get is why this would even matter to you. JFK was a hound dog or he wasn't. This matters? Perhaps this ties in to your belief that had he lived, Vietnam wouldn't have happened. He was that much of a saint - he couldn't send thousands of Americans to die and he couldn't step out on Jackie either.

You do realize that this would make him utterly unique among the offspring, right?