Ex-Blair crony who married three times
BARON Sewel insisted on turning a framed photo of his wife face-down during his sex games with two call girls, it is alleged.
The thrice-married peer, 9, also kept his wedding ring on while snorting drugs during sex sessions at the London flat he jointly leases with his third wife, 54-yearold Lady Jennifer.
The couple, who live in Aberdeen, married in 2005. A former civil servant, Lady Jennifer is now a director at Aberdeen University.
Bespectacled Sewel has seemingly enjoyed a colourful love life.
He married his first wife, Rosemary Langeland, 9, in Malvern, Worcestershire, in 19 8, and the couple went on to have two children, Thomas, 38, and Kate, 3 .
In 1988, Sewel married second wife Leonora Harding, 70, a clinical psychologist, in Aberdeen.
He lives with his third wife at a £1.2million home in Banchory, 18 miles west of Aberdeen. Lady Jennifer’s two children from a previous marriage appear to have taken Sewel’s name.
A woman who answered the door at the Banchory house yesterday said the couple were in London.
Until yesterday’s revelations, Lord Sewel was a respected academic and politician instrumental in helping Tony Blair push through Scottish devolution.
Born in Hackney in 194 , John Buttifant Sewel’s parents, Leonard and Hilda, were both social workers.
He studied politics and sociology at Durham University and carried out research at Swansea University before joining Aberdeen University as a professor.
He became involved with the local Labour Party and was on Aberdeen District Council for ten years from 1974, three as Labour leader, cutting his political teeth at the start of the oil boom.
He gained admirers as a smart operator who ‘knew how to make things happen’.
It is thought that Donald Dewar, who had been MP for Aberdeen South, was among those to have been impressed.
A Labour source said: ‘There were a lot of bright, young academic people who came into politics in Aberdeen at the time and made an impact.
‘He came to prominence at a national level because of the effective way he, and his colleagues, ran the council at that time. His pragmatic approach got results at the most important part of the city’s history.’
Lord Sewel went on to become vice principal and dean of the faculty of social sciences and law at Aberdeen University and was made a Labour peer in 1995.
In 1997, Tony Blair made him a Labour minister for Scotland to help draft plans for the new Scottish parliament.
He gave his name to so-called Sewel Motions – which dictate that Parliament cannot pass laws affecting Scotland without the Scottish Government’s agreement. After guiding the Scotland Act through he failed to win a seat in the Scottish parliament. He was dropped from government and left to languish in the House of Lords.
In an interview he once joked even his mother wanted him to get a ‘proper job’.
‘I’ve been an academic and a politician all my life. But even when I became a lord my mum used to say, “Why can’t you get a proper job?”.’
In 2012 he was made chairman of committees, responsible for overseeing standards of behaviour among peers.
He recently announced new powers to expel lords if they misbehave. Ironically, these same rules could now be used to banish him.
‘Why can’t you get a proper job?’