Talking to Teddy

The steamy British sex-and-politics scandal that forced a pair of Tory aristocrats to resign from public office simmered down a bit last week. Nonetheless, a few divertissements from the affair continued to provide London gos sips with dining-out conversation.

Most of the tidbits involved Lord Lambton, the Under Secretary of Defense for the Royal Air Force who resigned (pleading "credulous stupidity") after an investigation had linked him to Call Girls Norma Levy and Kim Pinder. Asked by a BBC interviewer why a man of "social position, charm and personality" felt impelled to visit a whore, Lambton replied: "I think that people sometimes like variety. It is as simple as that. If a man tells another man he went to bed with two pretty girls, the man would say 'lucky dog.' " Asked if he felt there was something like an international vice ring involved, he shrugged. "It's a sort of international organization -- like the Boy Scouts. You know, hands across the sea."

As more stories about his indiscretions emerged, Lambton began to appear almost incredibly naive. Although he had taken the coy precaution of using a code name ("Lucas") with his favorite paramour, he once arrived at her flat in a chauffeur-driven official limousine. He also paid for his trysts (at prices ranging from $125 to $625 a visit) with $1,800 worth of checks imprinted "Viscount Lambton" and drawn on his personal account at Lloyd's Bank. At one point he asked his partner: "You won't tell anyone I come here, will you?" Unwittingly, he was being recorded by a microphone that was hidden in the nose of his tart's Teddy bear, while a movie camera behind a two-way mirror filmed the duo.

Undistracted by Lambton's unself-conscious musings, a select Permanent Commission on Security is to begin hearings in London on reports that national security might have been violated in the romp. Scotland Yard pressed on with investigations into other aspects of the scandal. There were allegations of corruption within the Yard itself, and police were also poking into what appeared to be a complicated Europe-wide web of prostitution, blackmail and extortion. For the moment, however, no more political names had surfaced--although reports persisted that from 16 to 20 compromising photos of prominent men were circulating throughout London. Meanwhile, many of the city's better-known madams and call girls were incommunicado--as was Lord Jellicoe, the other Conservative trapped in the scandal.*

Thanks in part to his decisive handling of the scandal--and in part also to the diversion of Princess Anne's engagement--Prime Minister Edward Heath was in no danger of being unseated because of the Lambton affair. Nonetheless, there were rumors that trouble for his Conservative government might be brewing in the financial world. Last summer Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Reginald Maudling was obliged to resign after police launched an investigation into the affairs of an architect named John Poulson, who had declared himself bankrupt with debts of $595,000. Maudling's association with Poulson was apparently innocent, but the harsh political reality was that he could not remain in the government as Home Secretary while police--under his jurisdiction--were looking into the case.

Last month another financial scandal erupted in the wake of tax-fiddling accusations brought against Lonrho Ltd., a British-owned African conglomerate. The dispute involved several high-ranking Conservative politicians, including former M.P. and Defense Minister Duncan Sandys. It featured ingenious tax dodges such as paying huge executive emoluments into bank accounts in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands and rent-free accommodations for directors. More revelations touching on the seamier side of relations between business and government were being predicted in London. They could cause considerably more long-range difficulties for Heath than the coltish antics of a brace of aging aristocrats.

* Another, almost accidental victim of the affair was Conservative Columnist Peregrine Worsthorne, who was briefly suspended by the Daily Telegraph after he told a BBC interviewer that the British public "didn't give a f--" about the Lambton case. Worsthorne was soon back in print, but the paper advised him that for the next month he should not appear on television until after the bedtime of British children.

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