(Reuters) - Mandy Rice-Davies, a former model
who was at the center of one of Britain's biggest political sex scandals - the
1960s Profumo Affair - has died aged 70 after a short battle with cancer, her
publicist said on Friday.
Rice-Davies lived with
Christine Keeler, who had simultaneous affairs with Britain's then Minister of
War John Profumo and a Soviet naval attaché, a potential Cold War security
breach which rocked the then Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.
The 1963 scandal, which led to
Profumo's resignation and disgrace, attracted widespread public interest as
lurid details of the ménage à trois emerged.
It also produced one of British
legal history's most memorable courtroom ripostes when Rice-Davies took the
stand at the trial of Stephen Ward, the man who brought Keeler and Profumo
together, who was being prosecuted for living off immoral earnings.
Rice-Davies was told that
another establishment figure, Lord Astor, had denied her claims that he had
been having sex with her.
"Well, he would say that,
wouldn't he?" she responded cheekily.
Unlike Keeler, who faded into
relative obscurity after the affair, Rice-Davies maintained a regular presence
on London's social scene. She wrote her autobigraphy "Mandy" in 1989
and made several television appearances in later years.