A fearless campaigner but a fatally f lawed man

SIMON DANCZUK

THE bitter irony for Simon Danczuk over his texting embarrassment is that he remains best known for his campaigning work on historical child sex abuse.

In 2014, Danczuk, with campaigner Matthew Baker, published Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, an expose of child sex abuse by his Parliamentary predecessor in Rochdale.

The book was serialised in the Daily Mail. Plain-speaking Mr Danczuk became a fixture on the airwaves as he pushed for fresh investigations into historical abuse allegations.

But, just as he was making a name for himself, his second wife, Karen, began to attract attention by sharing intimate photographs of herself to her thousands of Twitter followers.

The pair met in 2006 while he was still married to first wife Sonia, mother of his two elder children. Karen was then 23. They married in 2012.

But after two sons and vast amounts of column inches, the Danczuks’ rollercoaster marriage disintegrated in the summer.

He threw himself into attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and, at the party’s conference, was pictured with selfie-mad councillor Claire Hamilton.

Along the way he has shrugged off controversies, including the revelation that before his second marriage broke down he had claimed an estimated £10,000 in overtime on his Parliamentary expenses while employing Karen as a secretary.

First wife Sonia has told how the couple had ecstasy-fuelled nights out in Manchester before they were married.

He later admitted he may have taken ecstasy ‘once or twice’ as a teenager.

The MP also got into trouble last March when he favourited a link to hard-core pornography on Twitter, later blaming a fault with his iPhone.

WIFE WHO WALKED OUT

SELFIE queen Karen Danczuk has attracted nearly 70,000 Twitter followers thanks to her obsession with sharing pictures highlighting her cleavage.

Seventeen years his junior, the-then Karen Burke met Mr Danczuk in 2006 while he was still married to Sonia.

The pair married in 2012 and have two young sons, but Mrs Danczuk apparently endless stream of revealing photographs helping to earn her the label of being ‘Westminster’s most embarrassing wife’.

Unashamed, she even tried to make money from her selfies, advertising cleavage-heavy prints scented with her favourite perfume on eBay for £10 each.

After serving as a Labour councillor in Rochdale and working at a delicatessen she set up in the town, she quit local politics to concentrate on building her online profile.

However, she caused a sensation last year by claiming to have been victim of repeated rape by a ‘family friend’ as a child.

After countless media interviews in which the pair discussed intimate details of their marriage, they split last summer amid accusations that he was an ‘arrogant alcoholic’ and claims she was romantically linked to her personal trainer Ben Bate – something she denied.

Last month Mrs Danczuk, 32, told Twitter followers she was dating Andrew Foster, 28, who runs a sports clothing firm.

LOVER WHO LEFT HIM

Another Labour councillor keen on posting self-portraits on Twitter, Claire Hamilton was thrust to prominence during the Labour Party conference in Brighton when she was pictured with Mr Danczuk, who confirmed they were dating.

In the weeks that followed, the 32-year-old mother-of-one from Leyland, Lancashire, shared photographs of home-cooked meals the pair were enjoying with her followers, even going on a night out with the MP and wife Karen.

But earlier this week she abruptly ditched him on Twitter, posting: ‘Dumped Danczuk. He had it coming.’

Miss Hamilton later called the MP ‘a functioning alcoholic spiralling out of control’, saying he had kissed a woman at a Christmas party and that the discovery of his messages to Miss Houlihan had been the final straw.