London: This was proper old-school, cliche Westminster sleaze. Cocaine, tick. Prostitutes from whose breasts to snort cocaine, tick. A dash of racism and political backstabbing, tick.
It was even in the right venue: Dolphin Square, the 1250-flat Pimlico block previously home to Soviet spy John Vassall, Profumo scandal good-time girls Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler, and Blackshirts fascist Oswald Mosley.
A gossip item in The Times said Princess Anne also stayed there in the 1990s and annoyed everyone by doing the hoovering at 5am. Housework, that is.
Some corners of the British media were ecstatic about the Lord Sewel scandal, which broke last Sunday with a front-page expose and online video. In The Spectator, Brendan O'Neill had only half a tongue in his cheek when he complained that "Britain's ability to do scandal has been in decline", shown up by "proper" overseas sleaze such as Toronto's mayor Rob Ford.
"The smallness of scandal has become depressing," O'Neill complained. "An MP built a duckhouse from the public purse? Fetch my smelling salts! A Tory MP sent naked photos of himself to someone he thought was a Tory activist but was actually a journalist? And? We've all done something like that."
He was referring to 2014's scandal, where Tory minister Brooks Newmark stepped down as minister for civil society after a male reporter posed as a female party activist and exchanged flirtatious chats and photos, culminating with a graphic snap of Newmark exposing himself through his paisley pyjamas.
"That a journalist had to tempt an MP into a pants-down scandal shows how desperate the press has become for filth in politics," O'Neill said.
But when the Sun on Sunday exposed Lord Sewel, tabloid Britain dusted off its old dictionary and gave words like "romp", "sleaze" and "lewd" a workout they haven't had in years. He was perfect. He took drugs. He entertained sex workers. He (briefly) wore a bra. He told them it was all being paid for by his parliamentary allowance (money is fungible so who's to say, but he was a public servant so taxpayers definitely funded this binge).
John Buttifant Sewel, 69, was born in Bradford, in West Yorkshire. His PhD at Aberdeen University was in political economics. He published a leading book on the social change that came with the death of the British coal industry.
He worked as an academic at Aberdeen for 30 years, and also as a Labour councillor. As Baron Sewel of Gilcomstoun he was a senior New Labour lieutenant – as the Blair government's junior Scottish Office minister he helped pave the way for the Scottish Parliament.
He moved back to academia but also chaired the Lords' privileges and conduct committee, among others, and in 2012 he became the chairman of committees and deputy speaker of the Lords, which came with an £85,000 ($182,000) annual salary.
He has been married three times: at age 22, again at 42, then most recently to Lady Sewel in 2005, aged 59. In Who's Who, he is said to enjoy "hill-walking, skiing and watching cricket".
And now he has asked the press watchdog, the Independent Standards Commission, to pass on a request for media to stop sitting outside his home waiting for him to say something.
But while the sympathy well is dry for Lord Sewell, not everyone is comfortable with how the scandal has unfolded.
At The Times, veteran crime reporter Sean O'Neill wasn't impressed with the reaction to the Sun's scoop. When police brought their shiny red battering ram, known as the "Enforcer", to bust down Lord Sewel's apartment door at tea-time on Monday, he saw "what the leadership of Britain's biggest police force does best: gimmicky, knee-jerk headline chasing".
"They did it after the 2011 News of the World scandal, responding to The Guardian headlines by raiding dozens of tabloid journalists at dawn, dragging them through the courts, then watching dumbly as juries acquitted most of them," Sean O'Neill wrote.
"And here they go again. Normally the Met likes to raid homes around 6am, without releasing any names. This time the boys in blue went in at 6pm and a prompt press release told Fleet Street to get out there and snap the drama."
This time, however, few have questioned the press' role in the scandal. One of those few was Ian Dunt, at politics.co.uk, who said "mob rule" had replaced legal process: "Whether one has actually broken the law or the rules of the organisation which one works for is apparently immaterial. What matters is if you have angered the public mood. The great populist spasm of modern Britain demands blood."
So did The Sun do the right thing by exposing Sewell?
Evan Harris, former Lib Dem MP, now spokesman for Hacked Off, says it's important to separate entrapment from subterfuge, and subterfuge from investigative journalism.
The key is the public interest, he says. The Sun's "fake sheik" Mazher Mahmood stepped over the line when he enticed innocent people into criminal activities they wouldn't otherwise have done.
The Sun on Sunday splashed its "Tulisa's cocaine deal shame" headline, after X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos was caught on camera boasting to Mahmood that she could help supply cocaine. But the reporter had flown her to Vegas and convinced her she was being considered for a film role.
"Mahmood got me and my team completely intoxicated and persuaded me to act the part of a bad, rough, ghetto girl. They recorded this and produced it as evidence when I thought it was an audition," Tulisa said later. In 2014 the case against her collapsed and Mahmood was suspended.
Then there was the case in 2012 of Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas, who won £50,000 in damages on appeal against the Sunday Times over false allegations that he had offered to influence government policy in exchange for money. A court found that the undercover reporters had maliciously misrepresented the exchange between Cruddas and the reporters who had posed as potential donors.
But Harris is comfortable with the Sun's scoop, which he says appears to be neither entrapment nor malicious, but the exposure of public hypocrisy.
"We support investigative journalism," he says. "It's not suggested by Lord Sewel that he was drug-naive, or he had been pushed [into the whole scenario]."
He had not heard any suggestion that the politician had been enticed into an unfamiliar, compromising situation. The prostitutes were called, not provided.
In his book Hack Attack, journalist Nick Davies said News Corp sometimes picked its targets for political impact, or to benefit the company.
When Labour MP Tom Watson and his colleagues on the media select committee were digging into crime at the News of the World, Davies wrote, the Sun and the News of the World both targeted him. NOTW's undercover specialist Mazher Mahmood emailed the news desk claiming that "Tom Watson as we speak is shagging" someone. The paper put their surveillance expert on his tail for five days but they found nothing: the story was untrue.
Davies also points out that News International "successfully wreaked havoc in the life of the only front-bench politician who spoke out about the hacking scandal before the Dowler story: Lib Dem Chris Huhne.
But there is no suggestion this time that The Sun had any axe to grind against Sewel.
In the end, if there is any innocent victim, it's those you would least expect.
Sex workers complained to the London Telegraph that stories such as these might make their job more dangerous. Clients pay for privacy and discretion, escort "Abbey" told the paper. "There will be clients who trust us less because of this," "Lydia" said.
For English politicians, it's more like business as usual.
British sex scandals; five of the best
Brooks Newmark, 2014
The Conservative MP and minister quit after sending an explicit photo of himself to a Sunday Mirror journalist posing as a young Tory party activist. The Sun ran the story under headline "Look at the size of my majority".
Lord Lambton, 1973
Charismatic Tory MP Lord Lambton was photographed smoking cannabis in bed with two prostitutes, leading to his resignation in May 1973 as parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Defence and as an MP. He was asked in a TV interview why he would need to pay for sex and said "I think that people sometimes like variety".
Paddy Ashdown February 1992
The Sun reported the then leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown's affair with his former secretary under the headline 'It's Paddy Pantsdown'. Knowing the News of the World would publish the story he announced the news himself and weathered the storm surprisingly well.
Ron Davies 1998, 2003
The Sun reported the former leader of the Welsh Labour party had sex with a stranger in a park near Bath. Davies initially denied the allegation, saying he was just "watching badgers first thing in the morning". He later resigned.
Max Mosley, 2008
The Murdoch paper News of the World published footage that appeared to show the Formula 1 head involved in a "sadomasochistic" orgy with up to five prostitutes. He later won about £60,000 in damages after suing the paper for a breach of privacy.
