Mandy isn’t the only Labour politician willing to throw in some juicy details in order to flog a few copies. Nottingham councillor and writer Catharine Arnold tells of intriguing past while promoting her new book City of Sin:

“Far from looking like a conventional hooker, I was a gamine public-school girl with a fresh complexion and a good figure. I had always had a thing about older men, perhaps because I lost my father young. I was never hard enough to be a real ‘Mayfair mercenary’, as the top girls were known. I never went to Tokyo Joe’s or Tramp, and the women who did terrified me. I wasn’t interested in rock starts or celebrities. I knew my type: they were the older men who would find in the quiet bar and take me to dinner and tell me about their children. I nursed the hope that at some stage I would meet a kindly sugar daddy who would set me up in Mayfair. But I never found such a man.”

Guido is surprised she never made it further up the greasy pole…