After Dinner Speakers: Cynthia Payne, Lawrence Dallaglio, Bill & Ryhthm Kings Wyman

Born in Bognor on Christmas Eve, 1932, she hit the headlines in 1978 when the police raided my home along a pleasant tree-lined avenue in suburban Streatham, interrupting a sex party that was in full swing. For months afterwards, the media would write of queues of middle aged and elderly men waiting to exchangge their "luncheon vouchers" for food, drink, friendly chat, striptease shows, and a trip upstairs with the girl of their choce. Vicars, MPS and lawyers were amont those who considered me to be the best hostess in London. When the case came to court in 1980, she was sent to prison for 18 months for running "the biggest disorderly house" in history, but on appeal, this was reduced to six months and a hefty fine for running a brothel. Novelis Paul Bailey wrote the story of her life, An English Madam , and she became a television and media personality. Two films have so far been made about her life: Personal Services which starred Julie Walters and Wish You Were Here which catapaulted the young Emily Lloyd into overnight stardom. The true story is told in a video documentary produced by David Wilkinson: Cynthia Payne's House of Cyn (Guerilla Films 1996) which was acclaimed at the Cannes International Television Festival in 1996. Yet to be convinced that she was doing anything wrong, since she no longer ran a brothel, she continued to give an occasional swinging party, and it was at the "end of filming" party for Personal Services that the police decided to raid her home again in 1986. The resulting court case in January 1987 stole the headlines once again and kept the nation amused for three weeks with lurid tales of sex, slaves, transvestites and undercover policemen in disguise. She won a resounding victory, found not guilty on ten charges of controlling prostitues. In 1992, she completed a three week season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where she played each night to packed houses. Galvanised into action by the second trial, she was determined to change Britain's archaic sex laws. This was the motivation behind her standing for parliament as a candidate for the Payne and Pleasure Party in the Kensington by-election in July 1998. This was followed by her standing in her own area of Streatham in the general election of 1992. Although she never made it to parliament, she did succeed in attracting the attention of the world's media to what she had to say. She is now an accomplished after-dinner speaker and once won the title of "Ideal Dinner Guest" awarded by the BBC "Good Food Show". She was invited to speak at an International Conference on the Cultural, Legal, and Social Issues of Prostitution, sponsored by the University of California Centre for Sex Research in Los Angeles. In April 1998, she had the honour of being invited to give a talk in Monte Carlo in the presence of Crown Prince Albert of Monaco.