I’ve tried to make these blogs about the human being who was once Christine Keeler, and how she wasn't always a perfect human being, but she was human. I think it is important because sometimes when you know someone it can help explain the difficult choices they make. I have met a lot of people who are critical of the choices other people make, and critical of the choices Christine made. In fact I’m sure I was pretty critical of her a million times as I was growing up with her.

One thing I have learned is that people can only make choices when they have options open to them. When they don't have any options then they are not really making choices at all. I think Christine found herself in this position many times in her life.

Friday nights were movie nights and Christine and I would go over to her old friend Dennis Evans for the evening. Dennis had a video player, so Christine would cook us dinner before we would all settle down and watch the movies Dennis had picked up from the local video store.

I have spoken before about how bad a cook Christine was. We mostly had spaghetti bolognese for dinner and on one occasion Christine experimented with a dessert, her take on rice pudding:
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The films were always after dinner, so Chris and Dennis could relax and “let their hair down.” Both had a few drinks, and then they would pass commentary on how ridiculous the storylines were. They saved the most contempt for Indiana Jones films as they were completely beyond belief. Christine also hated the films where an old actor had a young girlfriend: “Why would she even look at that old man...yuk,” she would scream at the film, but George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was faultless!

By the end of the night with the movies watched, Christine would get Dennis to put some music on his new CD player, the future of music. He said it was better than playing old vinyl records, but I think that was because the CD Player had a remote control and he could skip to the next track without getting up.

At the time there weren’t even that many CDs out as it was such new technology, so we would listen to Grace Jones, The Kinks and always finish on Christine's favourite Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. In the early hours and with the adults a bit drunk, Chris and I would leave for home.

It wasn’t a long walk across London - Cathcart Road, down Edith Grove to the World’s End Estate - but at that time London was pretty deserted and past the Fulham Road there was a derelict old house. I dreaded that part of the journey after all the horror films and we both quickened our steps. I was worried about zombies or werewolves jumping out and I’m sure Chris was afraid of monsters jumping out as well. On those walks home I was between ages, too young to hide behind my mother but not yet old enough to be her protector.

A few years earlier, some time in 1979, we had walked the same streets one night. I was much younger, far too young to be my mother's protector. The Omen was going to be on television that night, I was maybe eight years old and I had convinced my mother to let me stay up and watch it. I knew my mother would sit right next to me and if it got too scary she would still cover my eyes with her hand, the trouble was this always made any film scarier as now you could only imagine the horrors on screen and that was always worse.

Christine had brought me with her to meet a man called Michael and he sold cannabis. We didn't see Michael often, he wasn't a friend. Michael lived at the top flat in one of those big houses just off the King's Road, I think it was a small studio flat but it did have throws and big tie-dyed pillows everywhere, there was a large futon bed and the whole place smelled heavily of joss sticks. Michael was one of those adults who never looked at me and I didn’t like him. Chris would sometimes buy a small amount of cannabis, that was her thing. “Seems everybody has something for recreation,” she would say, “I don’t really go out.”

When we arrived, something was wrong and Michael was agitated. “What is he doing here?” he said, and he was pointing at me. I could smell the joss sticks and their incense was making me feel a little sick, but the look in Michaels's face made me feel quite afraid. I grabbed my mother’s hand. I could feel the sudden danger in her.

“I just wanted to get a little something. We’ve got to get back.” Christine manoeuvred us out of the door and at the same time she handed him some money.

I didn’t understand what happened next and I can’t clearly remember, but Michael was angry and I couldn't see a reason why. He snatched the money from Chris, grabbed his coat and barged past us, slamming his door shut.

Christine stood there in a seething rage before we followed him down the stairs. She was dragging me in her wake, calling his name. I remember how fast he walked ahead of us and how Christine dragged me along with her. Michael walked the streets always 20 feet ahead of us, speeding up when he needed to. I don’t remember other people on the roads that night but it was cold, dark and getting later and later, I was worried we were going to miss the film. We followed Michael for what seemed like hours with Chris calling after him, “Michael stop being silly’ and, “You’ve got my money.”

Then suddenly he stopped and we could catch up. There was a cold look in his face, it was contempt, and he threw her money on the pavement, pushed through us again and walked off up the street leaving Christine to shout after him. I remember her having to get down on her knees to pick up her money.

When we got home we had missed the first half of The Omen, a fishbowl had just smashed in slow motion and she didn't cover my eyes through as we sat through the film.

I asked her why Michael was so angry and she said, “He thought I’m something I’m not and I think he hated me for it. People can be like that”

We didn’t see Michael again.

I was very nervous when I arrived at St Michael’s prep school and immediately homesick. The housemaster looked down at me and said,“I’ve spoken to your mother, and we will take care of you.” I remember he was smiling - I can’t imagine the conversation they had had.

So on my first night, when everyone was asleep, I stabbed a boy in the arm with a compass. It worked, in fact I don't think anyone spoke to me for the first week, but I wasn't tied up and raped. In fact I never did see any boys tied up and raped.

I do remember in our dorm, behind an old wardrobe was a name carved into the wood from on an old boy It said “John Hurt” and a date that I can’t remember. We all knew that was the actor John Hurt as he was a famous ex pupil and we all knew he had the Alien burst out of his chest in the Ridley Scott movie, some of us had even seen it. We would talk about it when the lights went out at night to try and scare the boys who hadn’t seen it.

Many years later John Hurt would star in Scandal, the 1989 film about the Profumo affair. He played Stephen Ward and was very good in it, he was charismatic and likeable, the hero of the story. To promote the movie Scandal we went to America and Christine was on chat show after chat show, but she wasn't alone. John Hurt was doing a lot of the shows with her. One morning we all jumped into limousine and were on our way to either another chat show or the airport to fly off and do a chat show in another city. It was a long way from the council flat in Chelsea. There were four of us in the back the seats, which faced each other: Christine, John Hurt, his partner and myself. Christine was in a great mood, she wasn't tired that morning. She had begun to get into a new routine and had got over the initial nerves of doing interview after interview and I think her adrenaline had kicked in.

As we sat in the back of the car Christine was telling John about how wonderful her son was and I was sitting there hoping the world would swallow me up. Christine was always telling people how wonderful her son was, it was so embarrassing at seventeen. She was telling him about what a good actor her son was, I was in a youth theatre at the time and Christine was so proud.

“He is a really good actor,” praised my mum. “He can make himself cry, just like that,” and she turned to me and said, “Go on Seymour, cry, show him - just start to cry”.

It wasn’t lost on me that this was John Hurt who had been nominated for an Oscar for The Elephant Man. I was really embarrassed - John Hurt had had the Alien from Alien burst out of his chest, and at seventeen this felt worse.

“There’s nothing worse than a doting mother,” I said under my breath.

John Hurt leant forward, looked me right in the eyes.“Oh yes there is,” he said, “a mother who doesn’t care”.

A very quick blog post that some may find interesting.

It’s a list of Lucky Gordons crimes from the Daily Mail press cutting library. I think it is interesting as it highlights some of his later crimes against women, such as the attack on Daniella Perkins with a screwdriver in 1973.

It also has Christine’s scribbles all over it, this was one of her habits, any piece of paper, inside of a book, anything - she would scribble notes all over it.