Mandy Rice-Davies has died from cancer at the age of 70.
In four exasperated words uttered from a witness box at Marylebone magistrates’ court — “He would, wouldn’t he?” — she earned a place in the dictionary of quotations and summed up the changing attitudes of the 1960s, when deference to the Establishment began to crumble.
Rice-Davies, a model and dancer, was a key figure in the Profumo affair that ended the career of the secretary of state for war and helped to bring down Harold Macmillan’s government.
Although she never met John Profumo, she shared a flat with Christine Keeler, who was accused of having an affair with both the Tory politician and a Soviet defence attaché.
In 1963 Rice-Davies gave evidence at the