The Christine Keeler Story

The second of two films in which Yvonne Buckingham played the title role as a young lady with loose morals (the first being Basil Dearden's 'Sapphire'); both films as it happens with a strong race angle.

Structured like 'The Bad Lord Byron' as a trial in a highly stylised courtroom and concentrating largely on Keeler's relationship with Stephen Ward, it was rushed into cinemas while the poor man was still barely cold in his grave; if he'd lived to have seen it he'd probably have died laughing at the way he was portrayed by a saturnine John Drew Barrymore with a plainly dubbed voice.

Standards have certainly plummeted at Westminster in the past sixty years, since Profumo - who only enters the film in it's final third - was obliged to resign for lying to the House of Commons; prompting the judge interrogating Keeler to ask of the defendant the ironically incredulous question "A member of Her Majesty's government telling lies? Be reasonable Miss Keeler!"

That could certainly never happen today.