Irish lady of the night brought down British Lord in sex scandal
Sunday January 07 2007
A CONVENT-educated Cork born prostitute was the downfall of British Minister, Lord Lambton, over 35 years ago.
Pictures of cannabis smoking 50-year-old Lambton, Under Secretary of Defence in Ted Heath's Tory Government, in bed with 26-year-old Norma Levy and another prostitute in British newspapers finished his political career and his marriage.
Father of six Lambton was later to suggest to MI5 that he had visited her because he was bored in his job and wanted "variety" in his sex life.
He appears to have got that with Levy, who boasted that she had the best sadomasochistic and domination equipment in London.
Norma Levy, born Honora Mary Russell, the daughter of a cattle dealer who went on to live a life of prostitution and drug abuse, had been educated by the Order of the Sisters of Mercy Order and her parents expected her to take vows as a nun.
But instead she left Ireland at 16 and changed her name to Norma. By 1972 she had moved into the world of vice, marrying Colin 'Buster' Levy in London. Their home, and her place of work was to be 9 Marlborough House, in a well-to-do block off the Edgeware Road.
Ostensibly she worked as a 'hostess' at the private member's Eve Club in Regent Street but she was one of a string of well-presented call girls run by Jean Horn, a high class strictly word-of-mouth madam. Early in 1973 Lambton was one of her clients and she would say later: "I always give value for money."
He would sometimes turn up outside Marlborough House in a chauffeur-driven Daimler but was foolish enough to pay for her services with personal cheques, one of which, for £50, later became public evidence of therelationship. Norma's husband had bugged her working room, putting a microphone in the nose of a giant teddy bear, and hiding a camera in a wardrobe. When the infamous picture of Lambton in bed with the two prostitutes appeared, Norma fled to Spain but later went back to Britain to face vice charges.
She later moved to Florida with her husband but the marriage did not last and she went back to prostitution.
"This life is like a drug. I love hotels and fine clothes and travel and can have them by just spending an hour or so with a kinky lord who is daft enough to pay by cheque. How can I stop?" she asked.
She also said:"My curse is my looks. As soon as I walked out of those convent gates, men have taken a delight in using me. I suppose it is because I look demure and incorruptible."
By 1985 she had been deported from America four times for visa and other offences, and was once sent back to Dublin but immediately returned to the US via Canada. She later descended into hard drug dependency but was deported in 1988 after which she was supposed to have died of Aids, and Lambton believed she was dead.
But she was back in the States once again working as a prostitute with a $2,000 a day cocaine habit.
Now aged 59 she is said by some friends to be living in Canada, to have given up drugs; goes to the gym and drinks juice making her look 10 or 15 years younger; and is said to be a well-aged hippy, extremely intelligent and very well read. But apparently no one knows where she is; her Canadian friends think she lives in the US while her American friends say she lives in Canada.
