The World: Talking to Teddy

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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.*