The naked truth about Aberdeen

CHARGED with responsibility as deputy leader for upholding House of Lords standards, unknown-to-millions Baron Sewel, 69, is accused by The Sun on Sunday of ‘coke-snorting sex sessions with hookers’.

In a too-good-to-be-true twist, Sewel, who spent many years in Aberdeen, is involved in legislating on sexual offences, prostitution and brothel-keeping.

Yet there is nothing in the least furtive about the former Labour minister’s extramarital arrangements. He wrote a Bank of Scotland cheque for £200 to one of the women. (Aberdonians are famed for their canniness; did he think she might frame it rather than pay it into her bank?). While his name is on the cheque, the payee’s identity is erased in the photos, presumably to protect her reputation. Who said satire was dead?

Baron Sewel refuses to comment on the report, which reads as if it were scripted for a yet-to-be made Carry On Snorting film farce.

Unfortunately — given his (admittedly belated) discretion — his remarks to the two prostitutes were recorded. Greeting the ladies concerned in a bathrobe, he remarks jovially: ‘Bloody hell, you’re late!’ Slapping the (bare) bottom of one, he exults: ‘Happy days are here again.’

Turning face-down a photo of his wife, Jennifer, he inhales a line of cocaine, strips off and parades around the small flat. ‘He broke his own rules and he must go,’ declares The Sun.

Not surprisingly he stepped down yesterday from his roles as Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Committees at the House of Lords.

If I may be permitted a moment of levity, is it possible people from Aberdeen are over-sexed?

I speak from experience, having spent much of my teenage years there. After I’d been in London a while, I was invited to a party held by Aberdonian teachers on a course in the capital. When I and a friend got there, they were all — men and women — naked, dancing a conga round the apartment.