05/04/2008
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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There has been much written about Max Mosley and his little ways. It is no surprise to me that a member of the English Upper Crust likes dominatrixes, they are raised by nannies and sent off to boarding schools. When the House of Lords was inhabited mainly by inheritors of titles, the restaurants were light on haute cuisine and heavy on school meals, more spotted dick with custard than foie gras with a drizzle of truffle oil.
The French have long called a penchant for domineering women, 'the English Vice', which I think is a bit rich coming from a country that bred the Marquis de Sade.
The UK media has had a field day. In 1831 Lord Macauley wrote, 'We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in on of its periodical fits of moral outrage.' He was referring to Lord Byron, a naughty boy if ever there was one, but one who enriched the world.
To judge from comments on the Pitpass fora, some readers may not have grasped nature of the The News of the World. George Orwell pointed out that many a child in Britain owed their conception to father reading something about naughty goings-on; it has long been known as News of the Screws. In the days when families were large and houses were small, church Sunday Schools were popular, not because parents were religious, but because Sunday Schools got the kids out of the house.
We all have our sexual fantasies and varying levels of libido and opportunity. Masturbation has some very good points, you don't have to dress and do small talk, and you can meet a very good class of woman.
I bought last Sunday's Screws because of the headline. It is far from the only time I have seen someone from motor racing on the front page. Once, I arrived at a circuit and the photocopier in the Press Office was at full song to make sure everyone got the story.
Only yesterday I remarked to a former Grand Prix winner that if everyone in the sport who has been to a hooker had to step down, there would be some very thin grids.
There was an occasion when I was talking to a team manager, who had just returned from a trip abroad, when the team owner popped his head around the door and asked how a driver had been performing. He was not asking about race results, which he knew. The team manager assured his boss that their guy could have shagged for his country. The team owner smiled and said, 'That's what I like to hear about my drivers.'
Way back, at a Brazilian GP, a junior mechanic at McLaren celebrated his birthday and the rest of the guys realised he was a virgin. They clubbed together and hired the best that money could buy. The lad was inducted and James Hunt was in the next room. Eventually, the lad fell asleep and James made his move. Next morning, over breakfast, James told him, 'I'm afraid I played with your present.'
The Screws had the headline: Formula One Boss In Nazi Sex Orgy. There is nothing like a little schadenfreude to brighten one's day, but I was misled by the narrative. On reflection, I realised that there was nothing specifically Nazi in the story. Leather, big boots, and whips were staples of the S&M scene long before the Nazi rise to power. The Nazis adopted some of these images and you have to admit that they did uniforms pretty well: ghastly little people could feel special.
Nazis borrowed from the bondage scene, it was not the other way round.
In the media, the apartment where Max's private session took place has become a 'dungeon'. The original article says it was in a £2 million riverside apartment in Chelsea, convenient for the House of Lords, I'd say. The photographs do not show a dungeon, you'd expect chains on the walls at the very least.
It is one thing to do S&M and another thing to claim that it was a Nazi Sex Orgy. Where were the Swastikas? I'd want a red and black and outstretched eagles and Wagner at full song. There was a striped uniform, but it was as an American chain gang, think Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, think George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Think, strong, charismatic men who have been chained.
Concentration camp inmates wore vertical stripes, the better to emphasise their weakness as they were worked and starved to death.
My son is Jewish and I was one of the first men in Britain to gain custody of a child in a disputed case. I raised him from 18 months old, it was not some legal sophistry when he was in his teens. Nazis bombed me, along with others, of course. I have personally known the blast from a V-1. Anyone who glorifies the bastards gets short shrift from me.
On the other hand, certain parties whose companies helped bankroll the Nazis are now shocked by a private romp
Unless further evidence appears, I will continue to believe that Max was paying to indulge in sexual fantasies on an afternoon off. What did he do at the end? According to The Screws, he did that most English of things, he had a nice cup of tea and then he went home How Nazi can you get?
All the fuss has been on the interpretation some hack at The Screws has put on a sex session of a sort which had probably occurred many times before. You do not reach 67 and suddenly decide that you want to be beaten by a tart.
We do not even know if it was done in secret from his wife. Nobody can presume to know the workings of a marriage, particularly one that has lasted nearly fifty years. How many people do you know that will admit to wife-swapping?
Anyone close to motor racing hears all kinds of stories and these are mainly kept within the community. It is the same within many communities. When Sir Ian McKellen came out as gay, it spread relief throughout Theatreland; people were beginning to wonder if he was the only person who did not know.
Of course, it had not been Max's first time to what is either a dungeon or a £2 million riverside apartment in Chelsea. Had he been a first-timer, the cameras would not have been in place. Do you give your real name in any case? The guy paid in cash. Think of the logistics, it is clear that Max had been trailed, probably for some time so that a pattern could have been established. Money would have changed hands.
Under British law, it is not illegal to work as a prostitute as long as one does not solicit for trade in public. It does not prevent there being various 'meat racks', but at £2,500 for the afternoon, Max was not pursuing rough trade. Some people get part of their thrill from this, Oscar Wilde, who hired rent boys called it, 'Feasting with panthers.'
It is not illegal to hire a prostitute, so long one is not kerb-crawling.
What is illegal is to run a brothel, which is defined as two people working under the same roof. Five hookers were involved in this case so it was a brothel and the brothel keeper could face a prison term, which is no way to maintain confidence among your clientele.
My guess is that one, or more, of the employees was bribed handsomely.
Follow the money, always follow the money. What is the mortgage repayment or rental on such a property? You have to be paid a great deal to risk losing your business and/or your liberty. Perhaps blackmail was involved. A person who has information about a brothel is surely duty-bound to tell the police. This leads us into murky waters, like withholding information. The Screws published the story but, given all the legal ramifications, it does not mean to say that the paper initiated it.
British law on entrapment is vague and not only is Max very wealthy, he is a barrister. It is one thing for a paper to publish a story it has been handed, it is another for it to set out to entrap. In most cases when papers do, they have solid evidence and they will often come to an agreement with the victim of the sting. They will tone down elements of the story in return for exclusive quotes, that sort of thing. In some cases, the person nailed has actually been paid for telling their story.
Max left what has been laughingly described as a 'dungeon' at 5.05 pm on the Friday, the presses were rolling not much more than 24 hours later.
Max committed no crime by visiting the place, the person who could face prison is the person who operated the house, so they are an unlikely culprit. Who does that leave us with? One guess might be casual workers and such come and go. Do you suppose that many hookers use their real names? I do not think you will meet many a Wendy Whiplash who has that on her passport.
At this point I am going to break a personal rule. Max's father was the founder of the British Union of Fascists, he was also a cabinet minister and, in the 1930s, was reckoned by many to be a parliamentary orator second only to Winston Churchill. He was also a racist thug and I grew up despising him.
Never before have I mentioned Max's parentage in anything I have written and I only do so now because details are everywhere. They are there because a hack has put a spin on a visit to a whorehouse because of the family name. Max made Secretary of the Oxford Union, arguably the world's most prestigious debating society. Contemporaries of his that I have spoken to believe that he could have been President had his name been Smith.
There is something of Greek tragedy about this story, someone born to be cursed because of their birth. Oedipus tried to escape, he did his best, but he could not escape..
I have never been reticent in criticising Max. I think that he has treated the BRDC disgracefully; I have found his comments about Jackie Stewart distasteful; I think that he mishandled the McLaren case and that he has been very wobbly on green issues. I wonder what will happen if it rains in Singapore, under floodlights. Somerset Maugham wrote a wonderful short story called Rain (filmed three times) and that was set in Singapore.
Mosley was going to stand for only two terms, because that was sufficient, and I have that on tape. He is now in his fourth term.
We had the fiasco of moving the British GP to April, yet the first line of The Canterbury Tales mentions that it rains in England in April. He has made some really dumb decisions.
On the other hand, not only has motor sport never been safer, but road cars made in Europe have never been safer thanks to N-CAP testing. The FIA, which is about vehicles in general, not just motor sport, has never been stronger nor more influential at government level. To judge from many blogs max is widely perceived as arrogant, whereas it could be just that he is showing leadership. We live in a time when opinion polls and focus groups have replaced political leadership.
To me it is invidious that the Crown Prince of Bahrain has told the President of the FIA that he is not welcome in his patch of sand which happens to have oil under it. It is the FIA which sanctions the Bahrain GP, a national ego-massage. Max may have gone on too long, but at least he was elected to his post.
There are many, many other issues, like what do we expect of public figures, what is private life and what is secret life. To my knowledge no plank in Max's platform has ever been strict family values. He has never made a public statement which now makes him a hypocrite, he is not a tele-evangelist.
He has not denied that he is the guy in the S&M session. He is embarrassed, but most of us would be red in the face if our secret lusts were splashed in a tabloid.
Think of the thing that you have said or done that you would least like to confess to, use that as a guide to perspective.
Follow the money, always follow the money. It is not cheap to track someone so you discover not only what they have been up to in the past, but what they may be up to at noon on a given Friday. Then there is the matter of the surveillance equipment and the bribes to get it in place.
Follow the money, always follow the money.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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