“It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup”

Who would possibly think this demure young lady was a prostitute?

So runs the mantra in politics, ever since Nixon drowned at Watergate. But perhaps, given English proclivities, that should read, “it’s the covers down”, as the government’s Culture Minister comes under fire for not disclosing his relationship and trips (with) abroad – specifically, with a professional dominatrix.

A sleaze probe has been launched into the Culture Secretary’s trip to Amsterdam with his dominatrix girlfriend after he failed to declare it.

Tory MP John Whittingdale attended the 2013 MTV Awards in a two-night expenses-paid trip with a prostitute he had met online.

Rules state MPs must declare trips that cost more than one per cent of their salary, about £660 in 2013, and Mr Whittingdale is now under investigation to determine if he broke them.

The Culture Secretary said he went out with her for around six months in 2013 and 2014, but never had an inkling she was a pro; he should probably be fired from his cabinet position jut for being such a naive twit, but in England, as here, deliberate blind ignorance is no reason to dismiss a politician; in fact, it’s quite the other way around. Still, his peers are upset.

“No one here is worried about his paying a prostitute for rough sex, “Whitehall spokescis Roland Bendover told FWIW, “it’s an integral part of male upperclass culture, learned in public school. From pegging to floggings, it’s all jolly good fun.

“But a government official must report his paying for such services lest he be corrupted – monitoring’s the key here, and we may very well make Mr. Whittingdale apologize.”

A related story from 1985 supports Mr. Bendover’s claim that the British male is an exotic lot: private clubs that serve horrible public school meals, served by scantily clad school girl waitresses.

Back to School, lunch time private members club in the City of London. Members got fed typical public, ie private school dinners by scantily clad nickerless in ths case St Trinians style waitresses.

June 19, 1985|By Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune.

LONDON — The English upper classes, who like to think they set a good example, have a wild side that Americans rarely glimpse, or even suspect.

The doubtful may confirm this with a glance through the champagne-soaked party pages of the cheeky Tatler magazine, or with a visit to the even cheekier School Dinners Club.

At this campy London club, members check their dignity at the door and happily romp back into the adolescence they spent–or wish they had spent–at one of the posh private schools the English call “public.“

That these schools, along with an excellent education, are known for cold quarters, miserable food and assorted humiliations at the hands of older“boys“ and masters is apparently of little consequence. Survivors tend to remember these as the best years of their lives.

The School Dinners Club understands this perfectly and obliges. Members are greeted by a headmaster/maitre d`, dressed in a black academic gown and mortarboard, who patrols the dining room, occasionally “caning“ errant“boys“ who fail to raise their hands before leaving the table or neglect to eat their “greens and veggies.“

Indeed, once across its threshold, all 4,500 of the club`s scattered members, no matter how tender or tottering, are “boys“ again. Although there are some female members, the club caters primarily to men, who pay for this retreat into their salad days with an annual membership fee of 45 pounds (about $56), or 5 pounds (about $6.25) for a temporary overseas membership.

Dinners, from the traditional school dinner fare (roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and lumpy mashed potatoes awash in gravy) to more sophisticated Continental cuisine (Mediterranean prawns “whacked onto the grill–very stimulating“), cost from about $6.25 to $10.50.

The club was founded in 1981 by a young Englishman named Peter Byfield, who re-created the atmosphere and food of a typical public school dining room and went it one better. “He thought how nice it would be to be served by every chap`s fantasy: schoolgirls, you know, Belles of St. Trinian`s,“ said David de Mountfalcon, the club`s managing director.

Thus, assisting the headmaster is a bevy of curvy, tart-tongued School Dinnergirls outfitted in naughtily modified school uniforms: white shirt, rep tie, pleated navy miniskirt, black stockings, garters and spike heels. At the Baker Street club, the complement is filled out by Peepee, an exquisitely pretty, sassy young man in hot pants with the kind of male legs one sees only in the chorus line of “La Cage Aux Folles.“

The result, a peculiar cross between Eton and “Animal House,“ has been so successful that the club now occupies two premises. One is in the City, London`s central business hub, which does a lively lunchtime business in its stained-glass, 14th-Century digs. The other, on Baker Street, off Portman Square near Marble Arch, packs them in for dinner in its 60-seat dining room. “We have two main rules, really,“ said de Mountfalcon, a rather donnish young man with curly hair and steel-rimmed spectacles and who played the headmaster at the Baker Street club on a recent evening.

“The first is that members should be courteous to the girls–no manhandling. The second is that we don`t allow the throwing of food. When I get parties of public school boys in here, all they want to do is throw food, but we`re very strict on that,“ he said. Quite.