Former model Mandy Rice-Davies, one of the main figures in the 1960s Profumo affair, has died from cancer at the age of 70, her publicist has said.She - along with her friend Christine Keeler - was at the centre of the scandal which threatened to bring down Harold Macmillan's government.
Rice-Davies lived with Keeler, whose affair with war minister John Profumo prompted his resignation in 1963.
However, she never met the politician herself.
Keeler was also said to be having a relationship with Soviet defence attache Yevgeny Ivanov, although Profumo denied in the House of Commons having an affair with her.
Says Mark Steyn:
The great survivor of Britain's Profumo scandal died of cancer on Thursday, aged 70 and a fine looking woman in a way that her younger sallow hard-faced self never quite was. Mandy Rice-Davies was the tarty, assured, provincial teen who toppled a Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, in the summer of 1963, and eventually his successor, Lord Home.