The trial of the century
For the first time, a gripping new TV drama views the Profumo scandal through the eyes of Christine Keeler – and asks whether the reputation she earned did her a huge injustice...
July 1961, and Christine Keeler is emerging from the open-air swimming pool at Lord Astor’s Cliveden estate. Briefly naked as she changes out of her swimsuit, she’s spotted across the pool by John Profumo, the UK’s Secretary of State for War. He smiles and raises his glass of whisky in her direction. She doesn’t know it yet, but the 19year-old ex-showgirl who’d worked at Murray’s Cabaret Club in London’s Soho is about to begin her journey into the pages of history.
This is the opening scene in BBC1’s new six-part drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler, and marks the start of the brief affair between the politician and the wannabe actress that would become the biggest scandal of the 20th century. Not only was Profumo married and 27 years older than Christine, she was also enjoying a dalliance with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian naval attaché, at the same time. When this came to light in 1963, MI5 feared Profumo might have inadvertently passed on military secrets to the Russians via Christine. Profumo initially denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons, and when he finally admitted it he was forced to resign. Attention then turned to the activities of Christine, her best friend from Murray’s Mandy RiceDavies, and their mentor Stephen Ward, the society osteopath through whom Christine met both Profumo and Ivanov.
Until now, the Profumo Affair has been told from either the politician’s point of view or that of Stephen Ward. But The Trial Of Christine Keeler looks at it through the eyes of the person at the centre of the storm. ‘We wanted to imagine what it must have been like for Christine to have this attention from the Press, the government and the public,’ says writer Amanda Coe. ‘It’s a great story that’s never been told.’
Sophie Cookson, best known as Roxy in the Kingsman movies, plays Christine, who is certainly no angel. The show sees her enjoying a relationship with boyfriend Johnny Edgecombe, while fending off
‘Christine was a pawn, she had no control’ SOPHIE COOKSON
another suitor, Jamaican-born jazz singer ‘Lucky’ Gordon. She tries to seduce Stephen Ward (played by McMafia’s James Norton) while dressed in stockings and suspenders, and is a willing participant in the affair with Profumo (Ben Miles). But, says Sophie Cookson, Christine doesn’t deserve the reputation that dogged her for the rest of her life.
‘She was labelled a prostitute and there’s no evidence for that,’ she says. ‘It makes me angry how she’s been denigrated, right up until her death two years ago. I’m delighted this show gives us a chance to tell the truth.’
Writer Amanda Coe spent months trawling through parliamentary records and the UK’s National Archive to write her story. And it paid off, says James Norton. ‘There’s a scene where Stephen Ward pleads with a member of the government for protection when he fears he’s becoming a scapegoat and faces ruin over a trumped-up charge of living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. The dialogue is taken from that conversation, which was recorded and stored in the National Archive. And when you see me signing a letter Stephen wrote, we know the text is accurate because we had the letter transcribed from the National Archive.’
Ward, who had an array of powerful clients, was perhaps the most tragic victim of the scandal, taking a fatal overdose while on trial at the Old Bailey. Others paid a price too,
including John Profumo, the ex-war hero whose career ground to a halt. What he didn’t lose was his marriage to former actress Valerie Hobson, played in the drama by Emilia Fox. The Silent Witness star says she was angry when she first read how her character had responded to the affair. ‘I was jumping up and down while researching Valerie, thinking, “Why did she stay with him?” Then I realised it was because she loved him, and, after his withdrawal from public life, she got him to herself again.’
The Trial Of Christine Keeler includes all the most famous elements of the scandal, which ran from that sun-kissed day in July 1961 through to Profumo’s resignation in June 1963 and Ward’s trial. There’s Profumo’s denial of adultery to the Commons, and the moment in Ward’s trial when Mandy (Ellie Bamber) says, ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ after being told Lord Astor had denied an affair with her. Then of course there’s the most memorable element of the story: that photograph.
One of the iconic symbols of the Swinging Sixties, it supposedly shows Christine sitting naked on a chair, staring seductively into the lens of Lewis Morley’s camera. Except it wasn’t like that. According to the Victoria & Albert Museum where the original print of the photo is kept, Christine was at her wits’ end, exhausted by hours of photography to promote a movie about the affair, which never saw the light of day. And she wasn’t even naked. ‘She was wearing underwear and refused to take it off,’ says Sophie Cookson. ‘The myths are an example of the way she has been misrepresented.’ There were challenges for James Norton too, including long visits to hair and make-up to transform him into Ward, who was more than a decade older than 34-year-old James. ‘I do worry viewers will think, “What’s happened to James Norton?” when they see the lines on my face and the red under the eyes,’ he laughs. ‘But he was 48 when our story starts and 50 when he died.’
When news of Christine’s affair with Profumo broke and she was portrayed as the woman who’d destroyed the politician’s career and possibly his marriage, she was spat at in the street and branded a harlot. ‘She didn’t deserve that,’ says Sophie Cookson. ‘She had a difficult life, growing up malnourished in a converted railway carriage without running water, and she wanted to better herself in London. She became a pawn in a world in which she had no control.’
Others, it seems, did have control. During her research, writer Amanda Coe found a huge amount of material on Profumo, Keeler and Ward had been redacted. ‘While prime minister in the 1990s, John Major had the chance to review the redactions but kept them in place,’ says producer Rebecca Ferguson. ‘They won’t disappear for decades.’ Does she have theories as to what might be exposed (Prince Philip knew Stephen Ward, as we saw in The Crown)? ‘People speculated on set, whether the royals were implicated, or if there were security issues.’
The drama may not shed much fresh light on the Profumo Affair, but Rebecca says, ‘I want it to rattle cages and I hope it changes people’s minds about Christine. I hope it creates a debate about the unjust way women were treated then – and how they’re treated now.’
The Trial Of Christine Keeler, tonight and tomorrow, 9pm, BBC1.
‘Stephen used the girls as a ticket into society’ JAMES NORTON