Soulmates and cellmates for Rev Aitken’s ordination

REV Jonathan Aitken welcomed ‘soulmates and cellmates’ to the Old Bailey after his ordination as a deacon by the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, in St Paul’s.

He might have added school mates, such as his Eton fagmaster Sir Toby Clarke, and former girlfriends like Lady Antonia Fraser.

‘It’s a stark contrast to the last time I was here in 1999 when the former Nixon White House aide Charles W. Colson, who was being jostled by paparazzi beside me outside the court, said “this is much worse than the Watergate trials”,’ said Aitken.

The former Tory minister went to prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice after lying that his wife had settled the bill at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

Rev Aitken recalled that his old friend Frank Pakenham, the 7th Earl of Longford, the famous prison visitor, had comforted him by saying: ‘I really envy you being in prison today.’