Fly me

Mandy Rice-Davies (1944-2014)

In 1960, and barely sixteen, model Mandy Rice-Davies was draped over car bonnets at Earls Court Motor Show. A couple of years later, with fellow showgirl Christine Keeler, she would rock Harold MacMillan's Tory Government to its very foundations amid tales of sex, sex and more sex. No wonder the tabloids loved her. They'd never seen the like before; words like mistress, lurid, scandal and of course, sex, could now be strung together in the same sentence and increase readership faster than you could say Profumo.

Rice-Davies summed it up perfectly many years later: 'In a world full of deference, I had none.' Well, she would say that wouldn't she?