'Lord Astor leapt on me': Lost Mandy Rice-Davies audiotapes

June 1963 and 18-year-old model Mandy Rice-Davies is being interrogated in court about her sex life by a prosecution intent on proving she is implicated in improper behaviour.

Lawyers put it to the nervous teenager that one of the men she claimed to have slept with, former MP Lord William Astor, 55, has denied any such liaison. Mandy's reply is defiant, cutting through class barriers and capturing the lies and hypocrisy of the biggest political sex scandal of the last century in five short words: 'Well, he would, wouldn't he?'

It remains one of them most quoted lines in British judicial history and a phrase that resonates even now. And today, ten years after her death, Mandy Rice-Davies is causing a stir again.

The trial, of course, was that of socialite Stephen Ward, accused of living off the 'immoral earnings' of Mandy and her friend and fellow model Christine Keeler, then 21. It was Ward who had introduced Christine to the Secretary of State for War John Profumo and Russian naval attache Yevgeny Ivanov, with whom Christine was conducting simultaneous affairs.

When the love triangle was revealed, at the height of the Cold War, it had immediate implications for national security. It forced Profumo's resignation and helped bring down Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan's government.

The police decision to hold Ward accountable was construed by many as an attempt to deflect attention from rumours of a range of sex scandals at Westminster and in high society. It resulted in the suicide of Ward, who took an overdose of barbiturates after listening to the judge's summing up.

As Christine's friend and confidante, Mandy was at the heart of the Profumo affair. Both women new the truth of the matter better than any of the society figures or senior politicians – and now, remarkably, we're hearing her version of events anew.

Clearing out her mother's belongings last year, Mandy's daughter Dana found a handful of Dictaphone tapes in a cupboard containing Mandy's hitherto unheard recollections of the scandal recorded 'some years' before she died.

They will be broadcast next week on BBC Radio 4 in a documentary Archive On 4: The Mandy Rice-Davies Tapes, shedding extraordinary new light on the affair which shattered public trust in government and heralded a new era in which sex was no longer taboo. The daughter of a policeman and actress who longed 'to be part of something glamorous', Mandy moved from her hometown of Birmingham to London in 1960, aged just 16, after being approached by a modelling agent.

Describing herself on the tapes as a 'very self-confident' teenager with 'good skin and brilliant teeth, which was unusual in those days', she landed a dancing job at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho, a risque venue frequented by the capital's most powerful men.

It was there, in 1961, that she met Christine, who was working as a topless showgirl 'and that's where really the problems and the fun began', says Mandy.

Christine, who had an impoverished childhood and had been sexually abused by her stepfather, had arrived in London from Berkshire the previous year. Initially, there was rivalry – after Christine 'nicked' part of Mandy's dancer's costume, Mandy took revenge by throwing talcum powder onto Christine's dressing room fan, turning her white. 'And that's how we became friends,' says Mandy.

At the club Christine was introduced to divorcee Ward, 47, an osteopath and aspiring artist whose Harley Street clinic connected him to powerful people. Mandy describes Ward as a man who may have had 'wavery principles' but who was a 'wonderful raconteur' and gossip: 'There was something of the bitch about him.'

Both women spent time living in Ward's London flat. Christine described their relationship as 'like brother and sister' – a boundary Mandy broke. 'I did hop into bed with Stephen once,' she tells the tape, insisting 'not much thought went into it. It was not repeated.'

This casual attitude towards sex, at a time when Mandy says the contraceptive pill was still 'underground', was perhaps what made her and Christine such enigmas. Neither was a prostitute, but nor did they feel obliged to apologise for enjoying sex. Theirs was, Mandy recalls, a 'tricky' juncture in history – on the precipice of the sexual revolution when 'you could get, for the right price, a very good abortion', but women were still cast as 'saints or sinners'.

'Either you were Santa Maria put on a pedestal or you were a tart. There didn't seem to be anything in between.'

She and Christine were cast in the latter camp, and a coterie of outwardly respectable men were keen to take advantage.

Mandy recalls a famous orgy the girls attended with Ward: 'It was extremely embarrassing because of all these people lying around with no clothes on. I was pretty shocked.'

Both dated property dealer Peter Rachman, 42, notorious for exploiting his tenants. Rachman bought Mandy a Jaguar for her 17th birthday, forging a driving licence for her because she was too young to take her test: 'I drove around in it happily for years.'

In addition to his London property, Ward rented a riverside cottage in Cliveden, Bucks, on the country estate belonging to his patient and friend Lord Astor.

After Ward introduced the peer – known as Bill by the girls – he wrote a £200 cheque for them (around £4,000 today) for a deposit on their flat. 'Obviously Stephen had spoken to him and said, 'Can you help the girls out?' And Bill had said yes,' recalls Mandy.

She is adamant Christine and Ward's friend Ivanov, 31, a philanderer and drunk who had arrived in London as the Russian assistant naval attache in 1960 but MI5 suspected of being a spy, never discussed anything politically sensitive. 'What was Christine going to do, whisper to him, 'When are the U2 warheads being delivered, darling?' she quips. 'The only thing they ever discussed was records and music.'

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Certainly, it seems more plausible that the girls were exploited and cash-strapped rather than on a mission to extract politically sensitive information. And, Mandy insists, 'whatever I was involved in, it was never a direct exchange of sex and money'.

She admits being given £1,000 as a gift by Rachman before holidaying in Spain (a sum worth almost £19,000 today) but was emotionally attached to him too. Yet Rachman was in poor health and when he died in November 1962, Mandy discovered the woman she thought had been his lodger was actually his wife. 'He had never, ever admitted to being married,' she says. 'I was extremely upset.'

After attempting suicide – Christine found her and rushed her to hospital – Mandy was still 'emotionally imbalanced' when Astor propositioned her at Ward's house. Mandy had suggested they listen to Ray Charles records.

'Stephen had no music in the apartment… so we went into my bedroom. I put the record on and we sat on the bed, because there's nowhere else to sit,' she recalls. 'And the next thing I know Bill kind of leaps on me. We had sex, and that was it, really. It wasn't unpleasant. It was very pleasant, actually. But that was it.'

Meanwhile, Profumo, married to actress Valerie Hobson, and Christine were conducting their own affair, having famously met in July 1961 when he was a guest of Astor and his wife Bronwen at Cliveden and Christine was staying at Ward's cottage on the estate.

The Astors had suggested a moonlit walk to their pool. As they arrived Christine, who had been swimming naked with her own party for a bet, was running across the tiles for a towel.

The following morning Ivanov arrived at the cottage and Christine spent the day by the pool with both men. Ivanov later said Profumo was flirting 'outrageously' with Christine before he drove her back to Ward's flat and they had sex. The length of Profumo and Christine's affair is disputed but appears to have ended after the security services warned him of Christine's romance with Ivanov and he wrote to her to cool relations.

Rumours of their liaison swirled – but it would take a shooting and a court case to make them public. Christine had entered into a relationship with singer Lucky Gordon before dating jazz promoter and petty criminal Johnny Edgecombe in September 1962. Both men were violent – Keeler says Gordon raped her and she enlisted Edgecombe to protect her, giving him a pistol for the purpose.

On December 12, Mandy was alerted by banging at the door of her house. Christine was being followed by Edgecombe and told Mandy: 'He's going to kill me.'

Outside the open window, Edgecombe drew the pistol. 'And he shoots, and the bullet whizzes past my ear and lodges into the wall behind,' recalls Mandy, who fell to the floor alongside a 'semi-hysterical' Christine.

By the time the police arrived, Edgecombe had disappeared. But when an officer revealed he knew Mandy's full name – Marilyn Rice-Davies – she realised police interest in them wasn't purely related to the shooting incident: 'I knew something was going on.' In a bid to detract attention from the case, Christine is reported to have told police investigating the case about her affairs with Profumo and Ivanov – after which she fled to Spain to avoid giving evidence at Edgecombe's Old Bailey trial in March 1963.

Ivanov had returned to Moscow and, amid mounting speculation in the media, Profumo explicitly denied the affair, telling Parliament: 'There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintance with Miss Keeler.'

Christine had 'run off and left me holding the baby, so to speak', says Mandy, who flew to Majorca after giving evidence at Edgecombe's trial to try to escape the Press attention herself.

She returned briefly to see her parents and at the airport was arrested for driving without insurance and with a forged driving licence. In a disproportionately heavy-handed gesture, Mandy was locked up in Holloway Prison, where she says she was questioned about everyone Ward had introduced her to.

Her affair with Astor came out, along with the 'iffy cheque' he wrote for her flat deposit. 'That's where poor Bill got into a lot of trouble later, for an act of kindness, really,' she says on the tapes.

She also admitted to the liaison with Rachman and alleged a fling with actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr ('there was never a penny exchanged. The only thing he gave me was hot dinners,' she says).

Christine, meanwhile, was interviewed 24 times, after which Profumo admitted he had lied about his affair and resigned.

Mandy describes the decision to hold Ward accountable for his involvement as 'ridiculous'.

She hadn't slept with '90 per cent' of the men Ward introduced her to, she says, only ever paid him rent and only lived with him for three months.

Nonetheless, Ward was charged with living wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution between 1961 and 1963. 'The evidence was circumstantial. It was flimsy. It was based more on innuendo than in fact. I think the whole thing was something of a smokescreen to attempt to obliterate any reference to espionage,' says Mandy.

In court, her sex life was scrutinised – a traumatic event for anyone, let alone an 18 year old.

'I felt they had no business interfering,' says Mandy. 'I was certainly very sensitive over the word prostitute. Fortunately, it was never said to me because at that point I might have leapt over and knocked somebody.'

Increasingly frustrated by the time it was put to her that Astor had denied their affair, her famous, 'well, he would, wouldn't he?' quote – now immortalised as 'Mandy Rice-Davies applies' or MRDA, a universal shorthand for pointing out an allegation lacks credibility – 'struck a chord because it was so obvious'. She wanted to defend Ward, but it was in vain. The osteopath was released on bail pending a further, higher-profile trial at the Old Bailey, where, after listening to the judge's summing-up, Ward took the overdose. He was in a coma by the time he was found guilty and died three days later.

Mandy recalls: 'It was one of the worst nights of my life when I heard Stephen had died. Of course, you feel guilt. And I know Christine was absolutely stricken with grief.' Her fury at Ward's treatment remained.

'I only have to start thinking back on it and I get angry,' she says on tape. 'Why was a case that barely had legs to stand on dragged kicking and screaming into court? Something was definitely going on behind the whole thing. And what makes me angry is my frustration in not knowing.'

Profumo, whose wife stood by him, withdrew from public life, his reputation restored by a lifetime of charity work by the time he died in 2006. Christine, who served nine months in prison for perjury in a case brought against Lucky Gordon, died destitute and reclusive, aged 75, in 2017.

As for Mandy, who died of cancer in December 2014 at the age of 70, she had what she describes as 'one long slow descent into respectability'. She became a cabaret singer, wrote a novel and a memoir and married three times.

On the tapes she insists she has no regrets, but admits that the scandal will overshadow her life: 'It's not going to kill me, but it will die with me, I've no doubt.'

And yet, it lives on. As Radio 4 tells the murky tale again at least – for once – we can hear it in her on words.

Archive On 4: The Mandy Rice-Davies Tapes will be on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday, October 19, at 8pm.