Profumo Affair

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The Profumo Affair was a political scandal of 1963 in the United Kingdom. It is named after the then-Secretary of State for War John Profumo.

Profumo was a well-educated and respected high-ranking Conservative cabinet minister and married to the actress Valerie Hobson. The scandal stemmed from his brief relationship with a showgirl named Christine Keeler. Profumo met her at a party at Cliveden in 1961 organized by the fashionable London osteopath, Dr Stephen Ward. Their relationship lasted only a few weeks before Profumo ended it. Rumours about the affair became public in 1962, as did the fact that Keeler had also had a relationship with Yevgeny "Eugene" Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London.

Profumo's main mistake was to lie in the House of Commons. In March 1963, he claimed that there was "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Keeler. Profumo confessed in June that he had misled the House; he resigned on the 5th, as a Cabinet minister, an MP and a Privy Councillor.

The government had an official report from Lord Denning on September 25, 1963. A month later, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, resigned, his ill-health apparently exacerbated by the scandal; he was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Ward was prosecuted for living on immoral earnings and committed suicide in August. Keeler was found guilty on unrelated perjury charges and sentenced to nine months in prison. Profumo died on March 9, 2006.

Some of the events of the Profumo Affair are depicted in the 1989 film Scandal, starring John Hurt, Joanne Whalley, Bridget Fonda, and Leslie Phillips.

The affair is central to the Pet Shop Boys-penned song, Scandal, performed by Dusty Springfield and also mentioned in the song We Didn't Start The Fire as "British politician sex"