Profumo scandal’s Christine Keeler dies in hospital aged 75
CHRISTINE KEELER, the former showgirl at the heart of the Profumo scandal of the 1960s, has died aged 75.
Her son, Seymour Platt, told reporters she died on Monday at the Princess Royal University Hospital, near Farnborough.
“My mother passed away (on Monday) at about 11.30pm,” he said. She had been ill for several months, and suffered from the lung disease COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
Ms Keeler, then a teenage model and showgirl, became famous for her role in the 1963 scandal that rocked the establishment when she had an affair with the Tory Cabinet Minister John Profumo and a Russian diplomat at the same time at the height of the cold war. Profumo was eventually forced to resign after lying to parliament about the affair.
A major BBC series revisiting the scandal is due to start filming next year.
Ms Keeler, who had been living under the name of Sloane for many years, was married twice, both ending in divorce.
She had two sons, James from her first marriage, Seymour from her second, and a granddaughter.
Mr Platt, who lives in Ireland, said he, his wife and their daughter had last seen his mother a week ago.
“There was a lot of good around Chris’s rather tragic life, because there was a family around her that loved her.” he said.
“I think what happened to her back in the day was quite damaging.”
Ms Keeler was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex, and raised by her mother and stepfather, She was a cabaret dancer in London’s Soho when she met Stephen Ward, an osteopath, and “man about town”.
He introduced her to a party scene attended by aristocrats and VIPs, and through him, in 1961, she met both Mr Profumo, then Secretary of State for War, and the Russian military attache Yevgeny Ivanov, having affairs with both men.
When the relationships came to light in 1963, amid fears of a cold war security leak, the scandal rocked the Harold Macmillan government. Profumo told the House of Commons there was no “impropriety” in their relationship after being asked about it by opposition MPs who voiced concerns about national security implications.
Eventually, after more stories emerged, he admitted lying to the House, and resigned from the Cabinet and the Commons. His fall from grace was deemed a factor in the fall of the government, with Labour winning under Harold Wilson in 1964. At the height of the Profumo affair, Ms Keeler posed for the now famous photograph of her sitting naked on a chair.
I think what happened to her back in the day was quite damaging. Seymour Platt, one of Christine Keeler’s two sons