Profumo affair's Mandy Rice-Davies dies aged 70

Mandy Rice-Davies, one of the women at the centre of the Profumo affair, has died aged 70 after a short battle with cancer.

The former showgirl and her friend Christine Keeler became household names when the scandal that rocked Harold Macmillan's Tory government was exposed in 1963.

A spokesman for her publicist, the Hackford Jones PR agency, said: "It is with deep sadness that the family of Marilyn Foreman, also known as Mandy Rice-Davies, have confirmed that she passed away yesterday evening after a short battle with cancer."

Unlike Keeler, who after the scandal slid into relative poverty and near obscurity, Rice-Davies - a vivacious and bubbly character - continued to enjoy the high life, dancing, writing and acting, and marrying wealthy men.

However, she remained famous throughout her life for a comment she made in the witness box during the Old Bailey trial of society osteopath and procurer of women Dr Stephen Ward. He was charged with living off the immoral earnings of both Rice-Davies and Keeler.

When she was told that Lord Astor had denied her claims that he had slept with her, Rice-Davies astonished the court by famously saying: "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

It was a phrase which found its way into many dictionaries of quotations.

Last year, Rice-Davies leant her support to Andrew Lloyd Webber in the making of Stephen Ward, a stage show about the society osteopath who also played a pivotal role in the scandal.

The West End show charted the rise and fall from grace of Ward, who was a friend to film stars, spies, models, government ministers and aristocrats.

It was he who introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the secretary of state for war in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.

Profumo began a sexual relationship with the showgirl, who was also said to be sleeping with Yevgeni Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy.

The affair, and Profumo’s denial of it to the House of Commons, precipitated his downfall.

Ward was seen by many as a scapegoat for the Profumo affair after he was tried at the Old Bailey in 1963.

On the night before his conviction, he attempted suicide and died just days later aged 50.

Legal observers have described his conviction as one of the worst unrectified miscarriage of justice in modern British history, amid claims the trial judge improperly directed the jury to convict him on speculation.

^{Top left: Lord Astor and Bronwen Pugh, 1960. Bottom left: Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies leaving the Old Bailey, 1969. Right: Mandy Rice-Davies, 2013 (PA/THE PICTURE LIBRARY LTD/GETTY IMAGES)}

Rice-Davies' insouciant response regarding Lord Astor seemed to encapsulate a new lack of deference to the old order as the country emerged from the austerity of the immediate post war years.

Her claim to have had an affair with the peer - whose mansion at Cliveden was the setting for the scandal - was denied many years later by his wife, but she always stuck to her story.

"What was Bill (Lord Astor) doing? I didn't seduce Bill. I didn't even flutter an eyelash at him. I wasn't a temptress. He seduced me. In those days women did not leap upon men," she said.

Speaking last year, Rice-Davies disclosed that she and Keeler were no longer on speaking terms as she admitted they had not seen each other for three decades.

However, she said she was not entirely sure why her former friend had taken against her.