William Astor: My father, his swimming pool and the Profumo scandal

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[/audioplayer]Christine Keeler and Jack Profumo might never have met in the swimming pool at Cliveden if it had not been for a filly called Ambiguity. As children, growing up at Cliveden, we all swam in the Thames. In the summer, the river was cold, dark and full of sludge, but my grandmother Nancy Astor, a devout Christian Scientist, thought it good for us. Then Ambiguity, my father’s filly, won the Oaks and with the prize money a heated swimming pool was built — and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical version of history, as I had to keep reminding myself when I entered the Aldwych Theatre to see the new musical Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair. The musical isn’t exactly true to life, but it is based on what happened. Musicals need heroes and villains, so my father, Bill Astor, was somewhat typecast. It was unnerving and cringe-making to watch him being parodied as a typical upper-class buffoon, when in fact he was quite shy and impeccably well mannered. Anthony Calf played him like a character from a Carry On… film. But I was well prepared sitting next to Dame Vivien Duffield, whose father Sir Charles Clore also featured, so we could both cringe together.

In fact, we laughed much more than we cringed and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The musical has some very funny lines; the lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black are brilliant. Only Lloyd Webber could write a score to make a rhyme out of ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ and ‘Belgravia’ and make it work. But I am perhaps least qualified to review the music, so this is less of a review and more of a reminiscence.