Chapter 1 - Confessions of a teenage pornstar

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...” Henry V – William Shakespeare

Mandy Rice-Davies is dead. I just heard it on the news and now I stand here in total shock. That little bundle of bouncing, blonde bawdiness that taught me so much in my, ahem, formative years is gone. It is just me and Christine Keeler left now.

Instantaneously I am transported back over fifty years and 10,000 miles from the blinding glare of an Australian summer to my childhood years spent in a grey and damp old London Town. Back then I was at the heart of a scandal. Slap-bang in the middle of a sensation that would bring down a government, launch the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and propel the names of Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and Stephen Ward into the stratosphere.

Mandy’s passing is the prompt I need to finally commit my memories to print before I too pop my clogs. Me? You won’t have heard of me, so, perhaps a little introduction is in order.

My name is not important but you can call me Sven. I was privileged to have grown up in Bromley in south London as a lad. Well, actually it was Widmore Green to be precise and, as this is the story of my life then I guess I should be.

My Dad was a Major in the elite Norwegian Royal Guards who had married a lovely Scottish lass during the war and at the end of hostilities they both returned to Oslo, where I was born. Dad was also a close friend of the then Crown Prince, but later King, Olav of Norway.

When we returned to England in ’51 I spoke no English and, whilst some of my friends might claim I still can’t, this situation was quickly resolved by my attendance at the Ol’ Tin Hut school in Nightingale Lane before I moved to another ex-military establishment in Bromley (I forget the road) and then the newly-built St. George’s Primary in Tylney Road before going on to Quernmore Secondary in London Lane. In 1963, just as the shit hit the fan, we emigrated again, this time to Australia, but it is my adventures in London that I wish to share with you all.

For anyone unfamiliar with the ‘official’ details of the, so-called, ‘Profumo affair’ I suggest you click the conveniently provided blue link.

Before we commence upon this glorious romp through the Establishment’s pseudo-history of the 1960s and I fill you in on the reality, I should perhaps warn you that the cast list is somewhat extensive and, therefore, potentially confusing.

I will, wherever possible, provide you with a photograph as an aide memoir, so, here’s one of me. If not I have endeavoured to provide as many external links or Wikipedia profiles of the individuals concerned as I can; likewise I have tried to provide links to my source material.

The author: back in the day, obviously!

I am also rather fond of the odd colloquialism, or two, and so I will also do my upmost to explain any curious turns of phrase, slang or any other euphemisms that I may employ.

Back in 1963 the staid and distinctly decrepit world of little old England erupted in shock and scandal when it emerged that the then Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had been caught with his pants down shagging someone who was, most definitely, not his wife. The Tory minister, who had been banging Christine Keeler for months, further compounded these sexual indiscretions by then lying to the House about the nature of his relationship with Chrissie as he sowed the seeds of his, and his Government’s, destruction along with his own wild oats.

Poor Chrissie, who’d had more pricks than a smack addicts veins, was about to become an inadvertent icon of the sixties; the Lewis Morley image of her sat naked, astride a chair, becoming perhaps the defining image of the decade.

Christine Keeler

Back in those far-flung days Chrissie had been a busy girl; as well as two black west London hustlers, and Profumo, she had also been simultaneously shagging a Russian naval attaché called Captain Yevgeny (Eugene) Ivanov. Perhaps not unsurprisingly given that this was the height of the Cold War, the world wanted to know what little pearls of national security the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, may have revealed to Chrissie when he lay back and smoked his post-coital ciggie. Loose hips sink ships and all that, don’t you know.

The story really went stratospheric though when the good denizens of Fleet Street claimed that Chrissie, and her pal Mandy Rice-Davies, were actually a pair of two-bob slappers being pimped by a society portrait artist and osteopath named Stephen Ward who was also a commie sympathiser hell bent on bringing down the British Establishment.

That, like so many things connected to the scandal, is total and utter bullshit.

The Profumo affair was the biggest cover-up in global history, and Stephen Ward became its global scapegoat. The ripples and fall-out from the scandal extended way beyond the narrow confines of 1960s London. Its true scope and enormity would shock even the most ardent conspiracy theorist: it encompasses not just Ward, but all his girls and how he controlled them; its connections with the JFK assassination; of how the hippie movement was created as an instrument of generational control; the invention of a non-existent serial killer; of phoney spies and royal conspiracies. All to protect a secret!

A secret I will reveal to you.

But all in good time; first, a little background detail is in order.

I knew Mandy Rice-Davies very well actually. I dated her in 1961 and ‘62, ‘borrowing’ her from Peter Rachman, the slum landlord, who I knew via Stephen Ward. Her name was actually Marilyn Davies-Rice but her stepfather preferred his name first. Once we found out what was wrong with her – she’d been abused all her life by the aforementioned paedophile stepfather - and initiated a cure, she calmed down into a lovely little lady that everyone liked and she finally convinced Rachman that she was the girl to spawn his kids. He then taught her Hebrew, business management and economics (helped by Rachman’s then wife, Audrey, who had several degrees. Theirs was a business marriage, she was gay).

Phoney Rachman

Rachman, like Profumo, is another whose name has entered the social lexicon; Rachmanism having become a euphemism for rogue landlords who let their tenants shoddy, undesirable and, in some cases, uninhabitable dwellings. In fact, Rachman’s tenants were not unhappy with their accommodation; Rachman being prepared to let his properties to anyone with a penny-piece in their pockets in an era otherwise dominated by the ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ agenda.

By the way, the little fat guy you think of as Peter Rachman was, in fact, his double; an ex-paratrooper living on borrowed time (wounded in the war) from the East End who had Polish neighbours as a boy and who spoke some Polish. The real Peter Rachman was in fact tall, dark, and very handsome, 6 feet 5 inches tall in his stockinged feet; he had to bow his head in our living-room to avoid hitting the ceiling! Mandy fell madly in love with him at first sight. She only came up to his navel, which led to many a ribald comment!!!

Phoney Rachman and Mandy: Many say this was his best side!

The real Peter Rachman, Ilan Ram’el, was a rich art-student from Lvov who was planning on buying a tile factory when the war started. Peter loved designing and making tiles. He served under Menachem Begin during the war as well as with Vladek Sheybal - the actor in From Russia with Love - and the three survived the massacre of the Polish Army at Katyn in 1943 as they were out slitting German throats and stealing their food supplies. 

Peter then decided Begin had to be gotten out of Europe and to Israel and so led them west to Britain, where he had family friends. But when they got ambushed on the way Peter offered himself up to allow Begin to escape, and thus spent nearly two years in a concentration camp, surviving only by “doing things that shamed me”. Unfortunately, for him, some of the inmates survived too and there was a death sentence placed on Peter’s head. He got to England before the Poles found him. “I saw the inmates were walking dead, they had given up. Well, I wasn’t going to do that. Somebody had to survive to tell of the atrocities that went on in Poland, and the camp. So…”

I expect you may be struggling to believe some of what I have just told you, well hold on to your hats folks, because you won’t believe a l lot of what I am about to reveal, but that’s history for you. What was it Napoleon once said: “History is a lie agreed upon”.

History is written by the powerful and they will only tell you what they think you should know. They will give you a load of old cobblers about it not being ‘in the interests of national security’ or some such old flannel, but these are events from over fifty years ago and the paperwork relating to the so called ‘Profumo affair’ is being kept under lock and key until 2046. Officially this is because it will then be over one hundred years since Mandy’s birth, but Mandy is now dead. So is Stephen Ward, so is John Profumo, so is Lord Astor, so just who are they protecting?

Hence this journal: There are only Chrissie and I left now and she won’t ever tell the whole story. She is too traumatised and besides, who would believe her? I doubt anybody is going to believe me either; hell this is the tallest of tall stories but I shall write this and leave it for posterity to judge.

I used to be Britain’s top teenage porno-star.

Yes, you did read that right. Nobody knows of me though, back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s porno was kept very much under the covers as only very rich people had film projectors anyway. Most of these films were made to order, for a very specific type of pervert, and not sold under the counter and wrapped in a brown paper-bag like the top-shelf mucky magazines of the time.

That said, I did do a few photo shoots as well, but even these were only available for wealthy customers; your average hairy-arsed worker was barely earning enough to eat at the time, let alone to indulge in some top quality wank material. So all my starring roles will be gathering dust up in grubby lofts in Belgravia now; that’s why I can’t find anything yet. Found a few old girlfriends though. There were so many girls you can but recall only a few. Luckily a lot of them were glam-models for George Harrison Marks so pretty faces all-round and with tits so big you could get lost for a week! Oh, happy days. Sometime, somewhere, some piccies or a film will turn up.

Lately I’ve been out surfing the net for these glamour girls and watching so much porn that my eyes are popping out. A man could go blind doing this!

My first impression was that most of the guys and gals involved were a bit screwy, nobody deliberately fucks for a living on camera if they’re halfway sane. Mind you, I worked in the London theatres, the Mermaid and the Garrick, for a couple of years, ‘60-‘62, and a lot of stage/film/TV stars are a bit screwy too!

I’m out researching my murky past now, hence the porno-surfing. I’ve been in touch with a few people in the biz, so to speak, enthusiasts, collectors etc. You’d be surprised what some people are into for a hobby!

Nowadays I’m just an old git living on fading memories and I never earned a penny out of it; lunch and a free fuck was my payment and, whilst I’m not complaining, I thought now was the time to write down my recollections before they’re gone forever.

You won’t believe my tale; it’s so fantastic I struggle to believe it myself sometimes, but I’m going to tell it anyway.

It actually all started when I began helping out Harley Street doctors to research sexual development and what sex was. Only now I understand it wasn’t about research at all, it was all about money and control!

This had never been done before, you see, sex was a taboo subject even in medicine. The pill was on the way and they knew there was likely to be trouble and they wanted to pre-empt any problems; psychological mainly. I wound up doing sex-shows, photographs and films for a while. I now understand it wasn’t all research, someone was making money out of this and that someone was George Harrison Marks, the so-called ‘glamour photographer’ and film-maker.

I worked with Doctor’s Emanuel Miller (Jonathan Miller’s Dad) and Richard Asher (Jane and Peter Asher’s Dad), and Sir Raphael Cilento (Diane Cilento’s Dad). I have often wondered if it was a coincidence that they should all have successful and famous offspring or if it was a payoff for their ‘assistance’? Archie McIndoe was a silent partner, he agreed with the principle but daren’t be associated as he could be struck-off; his burn-patients always came first.

I began with the doctors in 1958 and I was to thoroughly lose my innocence in an occult ritual in a mere two years. It was a very quick apprenticeship! It began because we had a new neighbour that was a top orthopaedic surgeon (I forget his name, we always called him ’Doc’, originality not being a prevalent feature round my way!). He had a Harley Street practice and, like the others, taught med-students in his spare time.

He suddenly needed a ‘model’ to use; the boy he had having moved, and my Mum said yes to him using me. When I was up at Harley Street we used to have elevenses with the other doctors and often went to lunch together. Thus I met Stephen Ward, who wasn’t actually a doctor, officially, at least (long story, but he was actually the finest doctor I ever met, a genius) he was an osteopath. Ward wasn’t actually involved in our work, though he sometimes looked-in as he was interested. It was merely over tea and a chance remark that led us to the subject of hypnotism and me being asked to be the guinea-pig.

Doctor’s Miller and Asher were the best guys in Britain and they couldn’t hypnotise me, so they were annoyed. Ward smiled at them and asked me if he could try. Voila, I was under his spell. Though they were very embarrassed the doctors were forced to ask Ward to do the experiment for them, and as it progressed over the months he became an integral part of the secret research we were slowly getting into. I didn’t really know Ward at this time; I only met him with the other doctors there. One day my doctor had a real patient come to him in dire trouble, and I was taken to Ward’s surgery for tea and a chat during her visit, Ward having no patients just then; he was rarely overworked, though it did happen. Ward was amusing company, we had lots to talk about, we liked each other, he having no family of his own and he obviously missed having somebody to care for, a son, and I became that substitute.

Dr Stephen Ward

Ward got on well with my Mum too; so much so that I used to wish that they would marry. Sadly though, my mother already was, to my Dad, who was working abroad by this time. I later discovered that Ward was probably impotent; so no good to my Mum but she loved his company anyway. He was a really nice man and she used to visit him up in London quite often.

My work in Harley Street was always during the week, though sometimes my Mum would let me spend the night at Ward’s providing she had his telephone number for emergencies. PAD 8625, I remember it even now.

He had once raced cars and he took me to Brands Hatch, the racing circuit, where I met all the racing-drivers of that time, and got to sit in a few cars, too. Ward had been a fine racer, Stirling Moss once told me he sighed with relief when Ward decided he had to quit and think of a career, not being wealthy enough and being a mite too old to go pro: “You would have never have heard of me, otherwise,” Stirling said. “Stephen Ward could have been a big star of the ‘50s if he was just five years younger or had some money behind him.”

At the time I became involved in this medical research at Harley Street I had no idea about its background or beginnings. I now know that it all started with the ‘shell-shock’ survivors of World War I who came home from the trenches in a dreadful state and for which the Tavistock Institute was initiated to help to find solutions. Even in my time we were still working with war veterans, though these were of the World War II vintage. I remember one time when we were shooting some porn photos that there was this guy. He was a war-hero, a captain on a warship that ran into a German cruiser in the North Atlantic one stormy day when neither ships radar were working due to the freezing conditions. Surprised, neither backed-off.

The German ship was either sunk or was severely damaged, enough for the Navy to run them down. The British ship, however, looked like a corkscrew; blown apart, burning, half of the crew dead.

Despite being raked by shrapnel all over his body, his cock and one testicle blown-off, barely alive, the Captain lay in agony on what was left of his bridge and directed his sailors as to how to sail a ship scarcely afloat back into port, not resting for a second the entire time. He got a medal for that. Then his wife left him; “half a man as he was”, and he only ever saw his daughter when she wanted money. By the time I met him he was a successful businessman who was busily working himself to death. He was also going crazy. He still had an enormous sex-drive, but no cock.

The top psychiatrists of the day, the aforementioned Doctor’s Emanuel Miller and Richard Asher, aided by Stephen Ward, used me to find out how to give this man the orgasm he needed to relax. It’s all in the mind, you see. Tests with Ward (into alternative medicine) showed you could create orgasms using acupuncture but this wasn’t good enough, the poor man had to be able to do it himself, in his head.  

To this day I don’t how, or if, my work helped this guy and the others in the same boat; but it sure helped me!

One of the experiments we did was in ‘The Tank’ at a military establishment. They used to train agents and divers in there. Or so they said. It was a huge, heated, soundproofed water tank. They would throw you in naked and slam the door and turn out the light! Sensory deprivation. There was an air-line from the roof and a mouthpiece to breathe with so you didn’t drown. Then they gave you a weighted belt so you sank under the surface, floating as though weightless in space.

I was told by the Navy divers that I had what it took to be one. They used to read to me sometimes, Shakespeare mainly, through a loudspeaker. I was taught both under hypnosis and not (to see the difference) all his works, and Welsh!

They told me that they were testing to see if it was a good way to learn scripts, you see. I recall it came out all mixed up, not in the right order. I could only do bits of it and I needed reminding a lot. Thus they knew that the brain stores things in different places. But not why, and how?

It was all very interesting work and I enjoyed it. Far better than wearing short trousers and playing conkers with the other brain-dead kids!

Stephen Ward was involved with the war wounded as well. The first time I ever met John Profumo was after a visit to the Queen Victoria hospital in East Grinstead with Ward to see ‘his boys’, the burned Battle of Britain pilots he had worked with during the war. Ward never passed by without going in to say hello, though they never mentioned this in the media - and the other charity works he was involved with, Dr Barnardo’s, child abuse (with Valerie Hobson, Profumo’s wife, no less) Leonard Cheshire etc.

Though I now deeply suspect his motives, I didn’t then. We had stopped off at Cliveden House for a quick cuppa when Lord Astor came down to invite Ward to a dinner that evening. I couldn’t go as it was a black-tie affair and I was in jeans, but Ward was in a suit that would pass muster. So I had tea alone in Ward’s cottage listening to the radio. At nine I walked up to the house, the guests were just leaving at this time and I was to have coffee with the Astor’s. People were still getting their coats on, so I waited outside. Profumo was coming out for a quick smoke and a stroll. He just said: “Hello, nice to meet you at last” before strolling off around the house to the cars as he waited for the women to get sorted.

Astor, who was a former naval intelligence man, had met Stephen Ward in 1950 when he treated the Lord after he had fallen from a horse. By 1956, Astor, so enamoured with Ward’s restorative powers, had gifted him the use of a cottage on the Cliveden Estate, for which Ward paid a peppercorn rent.

There is a photo of Chrissie on the internet that always reminds me of the second time I met Profumo; she’s sitting in a chair, dressed in a blouse and skirt, looking fab (as usual, she was a really lovely girl, far better in reality than in a photo) a glass table on her left, Ward’s briefcase behind her on the right. If the photo was bigger you’d see my duffle-bag next to his briefcase!

I helped Ward set up this very quick shot, using only one light; she is looking up at me as he took it!

She had come out of her room ready for a date and Stephen was so taken with her beauty that he just had to take a picture. Then, as he was in the kitchen, taking out the now-finished roll of film, a horn hooted outside and she rushed back into her room to brush her hair again: “God, I look a mess!” A few seconds later John Profumo came up, agitated, “I’m double-parked! Where is she?” “Doing her hair...again”, I told him. He raised his eyes.

Then out she came with a warm smile and looking simply stunning. “Oh”, I quipped, “you CAN make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” Profumo laughed. Chrissie pinched my nose and wrinkled hers at me. “You’d better go before Stephen comes back in, I’m not supposed to have seen him”, I said, nodding at Profumo, adding I’d been told not to look out of the window. “Have a nice time, you two”. I got smiled at and they left.

So as you can now see I was at the very centre of events during the biggest scandal of the twentieth century.

Hopefully you are now beginning to realise that there was a lot never mentioned during the scandalous Profumo Affair? Why aren’t you asking why the entire anti-Ward agenda is on the top secret list until 2046? If Ward was, in essence, a mere pimp, a dime-a-dozen sleazebag, then this would not be worthy of a mention on the back pages let alone the expense of a huge trial in Crown Court.

No, he was the sacrificial lamb executed to spare the embarrassment of the so-called elite, the Establishment.

These same ‘fine’ people that used to rule us with the sword, before they realised this was self-defeating as they needed slaves to do all the hard work for them and devised religion to control us. This eventually began to lose its effect so they came up with the ultimate solution; rule us via our wallets.

They created the Industrial Revolution to force us to manufacture the goods we were then forced to spend our wages on. They moaned at how much we were costing, but omitted to say that they immediately took the money back again – and with interest! And we are so stupid we lap it up, ‘We’ve never had it so good’ forgetting the fact that we have to come up with the repayments every month or wind up starving in the streets. All we’re doing is making a few select families, dynasties, Masonic ones, richer by the minute.

Of course, though, there is a lot more to it than just pure greed and Ward was far more than a mere puppet; puppet master more like. Indeed MI5 once described Ward as being ‘the provider of popsies for rich people’, and they should know. Ward supplied the young girls in the same way the spy Anthony Blunt, or the gangster Kray twins, procured the young boys; on behalf of MI5 and for the express purpose of obtaining materials for blackmail.


Chapter 2

Chapter 4 - My fair lady

Thanks due to Monica Weller for her voluminous and exhaustive research into the Ruth Ellis and Stephen Ward connections

Stephen Ward first met Ruth Ellis at some point in the late 1940s. Exactly what the nature of their relationship was I was never certain, however, Ellis, who had fled from abuse at the family home having giving birth aged just 17, would go on to find some form of gainful employment by posing for nude photographs and running nightclubs. The kind of nightclubs where influential men could obtain the company of pretty young things who would, for a fee, keep them warm at night.

Influential men, of course, need to know that details of their late night assignations are going to remain secret which is why it would have been most convenient for them when Ruth became the last female in the UK to feel the warmth of the hangman’s noose as it tightened sharply around her slender neck. She had been convicted of murder.

Now Ruth had been caught bang to rights with the smoking pistol still in her hands, when she shot, and killed, her boyfriend David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead but, when visited by a solicitor on the eve of her execution and asked what had really happened on the fateful night she stated that she hadn’t told the truth because to do so “seemed traitorous – absolutely traitorous.”

Which is an interesting turn of phrase, don’t you think? Who was she protecting and just what secrets did she take with her to her grave? I did hear a rumour that she had slept with the Duke of Edinburgh, but that could just be bullshit.

What is true though is that Stephen Ward had used his showbiz contacts to secure Ruth an appearance in the 1951 film Lady Godiva Rides Again which starred Kay Kendall, Joan Collins, Diana Dors, Jane Hart, Pat Marlowe and Gina Egan.

Following filming, in her 1981 autobiography Dors by Diana, the delightful Miss Double D recalled: “I commenced filming on location at Folkestone where I met a beautiful young girl named Jane Hart who was playing a small role…when the boyfriend arrived at our hotel I did not take to him at all: he looked devious and was something of a show-off…he found fame as a slick society doctor among the jet set…My earlier opinion of him was confirmed in 1963, however, when Dr Stephen Ward died from an overdose of drugs after it had been revealed that he was behind the Christine Keeler affair…”

Which all sounds rather a little too disingenuous to me? She may not have liked Ward but she certainly moved in the same circles, attended the same parties, utilised the same surreptitious and devious two-way mirror recording techniques and covered her tracks by employing the very same lawyer: the lady doth protest too much, methinks!

Kay Kendall was a close friend of Ward. Indeed, at the time that John Profumo first met his future wife – another actress – Valerie Hobson in 1947 she was, rather inconveniently, already married. No problem, however, as Kay Kendall was busily employed to keep Hobson’s husband off the scent by fucking him senseless. Could this deception have been arranged by Ward? Almost certainly.

Pat Marlowe was yet another friend of Ward’s. She, allegedly, had an affair with Lord Astor, before, certainly, giving birth to the illegitimate child of the famous entertainer Max Bygraves. He would then pay her £10,000 in ‘shut your mouth’ money in order that she kept schtum* about the child’s paternity.

*Schtum = say nothing - especially in circumstances where saying the wrong thing may get you into trouble.

In August 1962 Pat was discovered dead in bed from, yes you guessed it, yet another drug overdose. Barbiturates prescribed for ‘depression’ in this case.

Gina Egan meanwhile, who worked with Ruth Ellis at the Little Club in Knightsbridge, was also friends with one Vicki Martin whose flat-mate in London was Ruth Ellis. Circles within circles. Again. Gina Egan would go on to marry the Maharajah of Cooch Behar; about whom I shall reveal more imminently.

However, it is worth considering just how influential Ward must have been within showbiz circles in order that he could arrange for his girls to appear in these movies. One wonders if Ward was trying to establish himself as a show-business impresario, or, perhaps, he had employed the services of one.

Vicki Martin had been born Valerie Mewes in 1931. She first met Stephen Ward in a doorway on London’s Oxford Street when they were both sheltering from a thunderstorm, or so he claimed. He took her in and began his Henry Higgins act (ironically, the fictitious Pygmalion character Higgins operated from Wimpole Street, as did Stephen Ward, whilst its star, Rex Harrison, would marry Ward’s friend Kay Kendall), transforming her from small-town provincial girl into the hottest glamour model in London. He got her a job at Murray’s Cabaret Club and she started to pick up bits and pieces of acting work including, in 1952, an appearance in the film, It Started in Paradise with Kay Kendall, who had been in Lady Godiva Rides Again with Ruth Ellis etc.

Pretty soon she had picked up something far more valuable than a bit-part; the Maharajah of Cooch Behar.

The exotically monikered Maharajah was something of a 1950s playboy whose horse-racing colours had graced many a racing-meet up and down the country. On the day he first met Vicki he is said to have walked into the Dorchester Hotel and ordered that the entire contents of its flower shop be delivered to her.

His largesse did not stop there, however, as he also commissioned the renowned artist Vasco Lazzolo to paint her portrait. In this endeavour he was not alone as she had also been previously sketched by Stephen Ward, and indeed, Ward and Lazzolo were pals.

Both were members of the infamous Thursday Club – along with the Duke of Edinburgh and where the Kray Twins or the spy Kim Philby were prone to drop by to chew the fat with the great and the good – and Lazzolo gave evidence in Ward’s defence at his trial. In this respect Lazzolo was taking a big risk as he had been warned by Detective Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert – who also investigated the Stripper murders - that by doing so he risked being discredited, perhaps by the ‘discovery’ of some pornographic material in his studio which could lead to a subsequent prosecution.

But back to the Maharajah, who had, by now, become extremely eager to add a veneer of respectability to Lazzolo’s portrait by placing a ring on the finger of the exalted Miss Martin. Unfortunately for him his family did not share his joy at the prospect of the ensuing nuptials and they threatened to divorce him from his wealth should he insist upon - euphemism alert! - taking her up the aisle. They needn’t have worried though, for not long afterwards Vicki found she wouldn’t be going anywhere anymore.

Vicki was, it seems, as fond of a fast car as she was a fast buck. She was also rather prone to crashing fast cars too. Some estimates put her motoring misdemeanours at a staggering twelve accidents, before, on January 9th 1955, the unlucky thirteenth claimed her life when she smashed head first into a newly-wed couple in Maidenhead in Berkshire; however, if the brides maidenhead was still intact at this point is unclear!

Vicki, despite never really working, left some £2,000 in her will, which at today’s values would be worth around £45,000. Certainly a far better return than poor old punch-drunk Freddie Mills ever managed to accrue!

With Vicki that fateful night was a Canadian author, who claimed an obscure connection to the Jack the Ripper case, by the name of Terence Robertson. Robertson alleged in 1950 that he had discovered an additional victim of the Whitechapel fiend with his discovery of the case of the delightfully named prostitute Fairy Fay who had met her demise on the night of Boxing Day 1887. Fast forward five years from his ‘discovery’, to 1955, and Robertson would find himself standing before a judge claiming that he had absolutely no memory of the car accident that killed Vicki, possibly because, at an earlier inquest hearing numerous friends of Vicki’s had told the judge that she could not drive!

So just who was driving that dramatic evening remains a mystery, as do Vicki’s earlier movements on the night in question. Some claim she had been at a nightclub, some a restaurant, some even claim she had been at Lord Astor’s residence, Cliveden House, but I guess we will never know for sure. Robertson’s wonky memory would come back to haunt him with tragic implications when he landed up as another of those poor unfortunates who ‘forgets’ just how many sleeping pills they’ve already taken. It is truly amazing just how many people with secrets have difficulty sleeping!

Coincidentally, or not, Vicki’s sister Vivienne Warren would later become the second wife of pornographer-in-chief George Harrison Marks. Also coincidentally, Vivienne went to the same school as Christine Keeler. More circles within circles.

By 1955 both Ruth Ellis and Vicki Martin were dead and buried but the Dr Stephen Ward modus operandi was in full working operation. Namely, discover attractive but vulnerable women that can be seduced in order that they will do your bidding. But to what end?

One can only speculate and so that is precisely what I shall do. It is perhaps no surprise that young Vicki Martin was so drawn to fast cars as perhaps it was those that drove them that were the real attraction?

She would certainly have met a few racing-drivers via her social orbit. Her friend and flat-mate Ruth Ellis was dating – and murdering – David Blakely, who was a racing-driver. He had been introduced to Ellis by Mike Hawthorn who was also a racing-driver. Racing-drivers, at that time, frequented an appropriately named drinking-hole called the Steering Wheel Club in Mayfair where the high-flyers of the era like Stirling Moss and Graham Hill could be found. As could one Stephen Ward.

Stephen Ward was, in 1955, living in a, Lord Astor financed, flat in Devonshire Street near Regent’s Park and he would maintain his osteopathic practice at this address for many years to come. Indeed, somewhere on the world-wide-web is an old Pathe film of him in his practice treating a patient. That patient is me.

Good old Chrissie Keeler would go on to live on Devonshire Street as well. Here she is leaving her flat to give evidence against Ward in 1963.

Keeler and Paul Mann

It is interesting that the credit on the image above says that Paul Mann, the gentleman in the photograph, is also a racing-driver! According to Johnny Edgecombe* Mann was an MI5 operative. We shall return to Mann in due course.

*Edgecombe was an integral player in the Profumo scandal. He was, at the time, Chrissie’s on/off boyfriend and it was his actions that brought events into the public eye. Edgecombe had rescued Chrissie from the unwanted attentions of ‘Lucky’ Gordon; another of Chrissie’s occasional black boyfriends, who had previously held Chrissie hostage in her own flat, and who was stabbed in a club in Soho. Long story short; Chrissie went AWOL from Edgecombe who subsequently tracked her down to Ward’s Wimpole Mews abode. When Mandy erroneously informed Edgecombe that Chrissie wasn’t there he decided to convert Ward’s front door into Swiss cheese by firing numerous bullets into it. Chrissie, being unappreciative of Edgecombe’s minimalist redesign of the door, and genuinely in fear for her life, phoned Ward at Devonshire Street who, in turn, called the Old Bill. Strangely though, rather than a gaggle of Scotland Yard’s finest it would be a throng of Fleet Street paparazzo’s who descended first on the scene and suddenly the entire nation would find the names Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and Stephen Ward indelibly stained upon their consciousness. Edgecombe, for his troubles, would serve seven years inside for – euphemism alert! - emptying his barrel into Ward’s vestibule.

Also residing in the same block of flats in Devonshire Street was a man by the name of Desmond Cussen. Now Desmond shared with Blakely and Ward a love of motor-racing, however, he also shared the affections of Ruth Ellis. He was the older, sugar-daddy, type character that Ellis had turned to when Blakely started getting a bit handy with his fists. Indeed, Blakely is alleged to have hit Ellis so hard in the stomach that she would, tragically, miscarry their unborn baby. Cussen was another former RAF man, though claims that he spent the war as a bomber pilot are wide of the mark. He joined the service in April 1945 and left that same October; a six-month stint seems very suspicious to me particularly given the time and expense involved in training him as a pilot; I suspect a cover story.

Therefore, I am inclined to believe claims that suggest that Desmond Cussen was an MI5 asset. Certainly, in 1945, MI5 did send a Major Edward James Patrick Cussen to interrogate the author P. G. Wodehouse after he was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. So, are the two related? Could the secret services have engaged in a bit of espionage nepotism; kissing Cussen’s perhaps. I know not.

However, Cussen has been described by an ex-Home Guard member with whom he served as being “a crack shot”, so, if we throw into the mix the oft cited claim that Stephen Ward was also engaged as an MI5 operative and compare that with the ‘coincidence’ that David Blakely just happens to be buried in the same graveyard at which the Russian spy Donald Maclean’s ashes were scattered then we can concoct, at the very least, a possible synopsis for the actions of Ellis and her curious claim about not having told the truth about her motives for murdering her lover because it “seemed traitorous – absolutely traitorous.”

What if Blakely – a loud-mouthed drunk – had knowledge of, or worse still, evidence of Maclean’s treachery and had threatened to go public? Alternatively, What if Blakely was also a Russian spy or sympathiser? Maybe Ellis had knowledge of this also? Perhaps then Ellis was only acting out orders when she fired the fatal shots? Ellis may have been a Manchurian Candidate; programmed to kill and programmed to take any secrets with her down through the gallows trap-doors. Maybe crack shot Cussen, lurking in the shadows somewhere, had actually fired the lethal shots and left Ellis to take the rap believing she was genuinely responsible? She killed, or believed she had killed, to protect the integrity of the nation she loved before MI5 disposed of the bodies at a ‘friendly facility’ for redundant spooks.

Indeed one might well question why the British nation would go to the time, trouble and expense of repatriating the remains of Donald Maclean from Russia if he really was the drunken, traitorous spy that history has branded him.

So, is it even possible to programme someone to carry an act as draconian as assassinating a fellow human being? Probably not, but one significant fact in the Ellis case is that one of the shots that hit Blakely did so from a point-blank range. Meaning Ellis must have fired at least one of the kill shots. At the very least it must be difficult to rely on someone actually performing an assassination to perfection, so maybe Cussen was on hand to ensure that Blakely would die whilst Ellis had been conditioned to accept being the patsy, and then duly took the blame.

We shall return to this aspect of a potential Tavistock end-game later in our merry pilgrimage; beforehand we must prepare the groundwork.

To this end we should explore the considerable links that seem to exist between the RAF – and in particular Battle of Britain – pilots and motor-racing drivers. Perhaps these links exist simply because both professions attract adrenaline junkies with a need for speed; but maybe there is another reason? Let us investigate:

Firstly we have Squadron Leader Brian “Sandy” Lane who married the famous female racing driver Eileen Ellison in Cambridge.

Which leads nicely to Roberta Cowell who was both a racing-driver and World War II fighter pilot. Roberta was also the first known British transsexual woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. In 1941, and still pre-op, Roberta married Diana Margaret Zelma Carpenter with whom she shared an interest in motor-racing.

Then we have Squadron Leader Tony Gaze who was one of Battle of Britain legend, Douglas Bader’s most trusted flying colleagues, offering him protection on many dangerous sorties. After the war, Gaze became the first Australian to compete in a Grand Prix and came up with the idea of turning RAF Westhampnett into what is now Goodwood racing track.

Lastly, we have Whitney Straight, an American, who was both a Grand Prix motor-racing driver and a Battle of Britain pilot. Straight, another ex-Cambridge man had had an affair with noted aviator Diana Barnato Walker, MBE, the first British woman to break the sound barrier and who was the daughter of another famous racing-driver, Woolf Barnato and the widow of Wing Commander Derek Ronald Walker who was killed in 1945.

Perhaps though, for reasons that will become apparent in due course, of even greater significance was the identity of Whitney’s brother; Michael Whitney Straight, about whom I shall quote directly from his Wikipedia page:

While a student at the University of Cambridge in the mid-1930s, Straight became a Communist Party member and a part of an intellectual secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. Straight worked for the Soviet Union as part of a spy ring whose members included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and KGB recruiter Anthony Blunt, who had briefly been Straight’s lover. A document from Soviet archives of a report that Blunt made in 1943 to the KGB states, “As you already know the actual recruits whom I took were Michael Straight”.

Whilst we should not forget the actress Deborah Kerr’s husband, Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley. Bartley was not a motor-racing-driver, however, he did, post WWII, move into show business, and Hollywood, becoming quite the major player in lovey land in the process. Bartley, it seems, was yet another member of Stephen Ward’s showbiz network given that Ward, and Ruth Ellis, would make up a regular awesome foursome with Bartley and Kerr at the White Hart Hotel in Brasted in Kent in the late forties.

The landlord of the White Hart was a guy called Teddy Preston who was a former naval intelligence man and it seems the pub was something of a regular haunt for many of the Battle of Britain pilots, known as the Few. The alleged Russian spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean would also frequent this watering hole. Another regular at the White Hart was Ruth’s husband George Ellis. George was, officially, a dentist, and an alcoholic who would regularly make a 30 mile round trip from Croydon to Brasted, by bicycle, for a tipple at the bar. A newspaper article detailing George and Ruth’s visits to the pub can be found here.

Now why would George make such a monumental and regular round trip? I suspect that George, who was considerably older than Ruth, was either acting as her handler or, alternatively, the marriage was connived specifically to provide George with a veneer of respectability. George died in 1958 – suicide, naturally enough – with what would amount to around £150,000 in modern money just sitting in his bank account doing nothing. From where did he acquire such an astonishing sum and why hadn’t he pissed it up the nearest wall? One would assume it was either payment for services received or was shut your mouth money. We will probably never know.

George met Ruth when she was working as a nightclub hostess; the Court Club in this instance of which Diana Dors and Denis Hamilton were regular patrons, naturally, and where she also met David Blakely, officially, at least, for the first time. Now whilst it is perfectly feasible to see the attraction of these drinking holes as extensions of the old-boy-networks and as an environment in which the entitled minorities could let their hair down in private, it is not quite so clear, at first view at any rate, why the manageress would need to be so thoroughly chaperoned. The only plausible explanation is that Ruth, in this role, would be overhearing hugely sensitive information and ‘they’ wanted to ensure it was not disclosed to a wider audience.

Maybe this is why George Ellis would visit the White Hart, home of the Few and managed as it was by the ex-intelligence man, to report back on his wife and her activities. There is also quite an established link between dentists and hypnotism. Was George hypnotically controlling his wife as Stephen Ward had also done?

Author MonicaWeller* who has written extensively about Ruth Ellis claims that Ruth addressed her final handwritten letter from prison “To the Few I know”; a cryptic, but perhaps telling glimpse at the reality of her situation.

*Monica Weller would like me to supply further acknowledgement to her work. You can visit her blog here, or alternatively, please buy her book here

A quick return visit to the Wikipedia account of Leonard Cheshire may prove telling:  

Cheshire had strong feelings on any crew refusing to fly (commonly called Lack of Moral Fibre in the RAF) when subject to the combat stress of Bomber Command’s sorties (many of which had loss rates of 50% or more). Even as a brilliant and sympathetic leader, he wrote “I was ruthless with LMF, I had to be. We were airmen not psychiatrists. Of course we had concern for any individual whose internal tensions meant that he could no longer go on but there was a worry that one really frightened man could affect others around him. There was no time to be as compassionate as I would like to have been.” Thus Cheshire transferred LMF cases out of his squadron almost instantaneously.

Now whilst I can understand why Cheshire acted as he did, it does reveal a clear psychological aspect of Battle of Britain pilots – and presumably motor-racing-drivers - that would remain useful outside the theatre of war. Namely that ability to think clearly, and coldly, under extreme duress even when facing potential death. Add to that an inherent ability to blindly follow orders and what you have is an extremely efficient and intelligent unit; ideal, perhaps, for monitoring, and running, a team of pre-programmed Manchurian candidates.

Consider also Cheshire’s post war care home set-up which provided Tavistock with an on-going supply of brainwashing subjects, and Stephen Ward’s relationship with Cheshire and a glimpse of the truth emerges from the years of subterfuge.

Stephen Ward was certainly capable of brainwashing people into doing whatever he wanted. True. I’ve got an uncle in Norway who could do that to his wife, usually during a party and to her great embarrassment! But not everybody is susceptible, and certainly not everybody can do it. But it does work, I’ve seen it done. Not only seen, Ward used me for that too, but I’m not going to tell you about that! (Other than that I had fun... I think).

But it is not fun for everybody, for some it has far more serious connotations.

Chapter 5