Comedian Barry Cryer recalls his old friend Dr Stephen Ward, the society osteopath who rented a cottage at Cliveden and was a central figure in the Profumo Affair, now the subject of a Lloyd Webber play.
“He used to turn up at The Windmill Theatre in Soho in 1957 when Bruce Forsyth was appearing there,” says Barry. “He was absolutely charming and he always brought lots of beautiful girls with him. He told us some unlikely stories about MI5 — it now appears that all of them were true. He was a victim of the Establishment. It was absolutely disgraceful. He was certainly not a pimp, as they claimed.”
Oldie editor Richard Ingrams, then editor of Private Eye, says the first they heard of Ward was when he arrived in its Greek Street office asking what they knew about him.
