Political scandals come in two varieties. The first is the straightforward discovery of chicanery exercised in a particular context, with an evident nefarious purpose, by perpetrators exposed to public scrutiny. The second is a two-tier scandal which, at first, appears to belong to the category already described, but on closer scrutiny turns out to have a further dimension, with more serious ramifications than the initial revelations. The Profumo affair was an example of this second category. Initially, it appeared to be a conventional sex scandal, involving a married government minister and a poule de luxe, aggravated by the minister’s lying to the House of Commons.