Keeler, Christine 1942-
English former model and show girl

After an unhappy childhood spent mainly in the Thames Valley, at Wraysbury, she left home at 16 and went to London, where she worked at Murray's Cabaret Club. Here she met Mandy Rice-Davies, who was to become a close friend. Stephen Ward, an osteopath, was a frequent visitor to the club and he and Keeler formed a relationship and eventually lived together, although there were frequent rifts between them. Ward introduced her and Rice-Davies into his circle of influential friends, including the Conservative Cabinet minister, John Profumo, with whom Keeler had an affair, while being involved at the same time with a Soviet diplomat. This led to Profumo's resignation from politics (1963), the prosecution of Ward for living on immoral earnings, and Ward's eventual suicide. Keeler herself served a prison sentence for related offences. In the late 1980s, her autobiography, studies of the Ward trial and its aftermath, and the film Scandal (1988), in which she collaborated, revived interest in the events and raised doubts about the validity of the charges made against her and Ward.