BOADICEA FOR THE MODERN WORLD

Francis Wheen encounters the

leader of the Corrective Party, and is chastised

MOST weeks, the classified section of the Paddington Mercury carries about a hun- dred advertisements under the heading 'Massage'. The purveyors of these rub- downs usually give their first names only — or, rather, the pseudonyms that they hope will justify the adjective 'exotic' in their advert: Adriana, Amber, Anina, Brit- ta, Corina. But two advertisers print sur- names as well. There is 'affectionate, caring, educated Sara Dale', Norman Lam- ont's former lodger, who offers 'sensual massage to discerning clients'. And there is 'Rent-a-Fantasy. Call Lindi St Clair.'

I called Lindi St Clair. The phone was answered by her maid. 'Madame specialis- es in kinky sex and bondage,' she said briskly: 150 for a f— and a suck, /40 for dressing up, and £100 an hour for a kinky mixture — that's a bit of everything.' She added: 'The more you spend, the more you get.' It is a truth which neither Norman Lamont nor John Smith would deny.

Any politician who grumbles about long hours should study Lindi's routine: from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day of the week, including Sundays, she thrashes and fon- dles clients in her basement flat near the Earls Court exhibition centre; in spare moments she writes her autobiography, to be published by Piatkus in the autumn; and she leads a political party.

Lindi St Clair is — has — a striking fig- ure — 'a Boadicea for the Modern World', one of her leaflets modestly suggests — and the programme of her Corrective Party is both succinct and radical. After a trudge through the other parties' inter- minable manifestos, the Corrective 'state- ment of policies' is as bracing as a gin-and-lime: 'Equalise the age of consent for homosexuals and heterosexuals . . . Permit Sunday trading . . . Tax the monarch's private wealth and profits . . .

Legalise cannabis. . . Proportional Repre- sentation ... Better burial rights, e.g. at sea, or on private land . . . More scientific research into obesity, calories and metabolism.' There is some self-interest in this first policy: speaking 'as a fat person', St Clair points out that smokers and alco- holics can get help from their doctors 'but alas, poor fatties are told 'you must have will-power' and are left to their own devices'.

When I first spoke to the new Boadicea, at the beginning of March, she told me that Corrective candidates would 'definite- ly' be standing in at least 50 constituen- cies, entitling the party to a five-minute election broadcast. Ken Russell had volun- teered to direct it, but his budget of £45,000 was rather more than the Correc- tive Party could afford. `So we're going to go the cheap route and get this chap round the corner who does wedding videos,' she told me with a raucous laugh. 'He charges £700 a day and can get it all done for about £3,000. It's going to be filmed down my brothel with my girls. I'm going to show the nice side of prostitution which no one ever talks about. We pay tax, yet we're criminalised at the same time.'

For someone who had just been socked by the Inland Revenue with a tax demand for £68,000, the Correctives' leader seemed remarkably cheerful. But when next I telephoned her, at the beginning of the election campaign, she was in a foul mood. 'I don't want to speak to the press,' she snarled. The Spectator? That's Labour

trash, isn't it?' She then put the phone down on me.

After I had mollified her with a flattering fax, she rang back. 'Sorry about that,' she said. 'It's just that we're fed up with the media trivialising us.' What most irks her is that newspapers always refer to her occu- pation and her nickname. 'I've not called

myself Miss Whiplash for three years. The Sun made up that name for me in the

1980s. The days of Miss Whiplash and

prostitutes and brothels are over now. I've had two apologies from the Western Mail and the Guardian for the way they've writ-

ten about me. I'm not going to put up with it any more.' Henceforth, she announced, the Corrective Party would have nothing to do with journalists. Nor, for that matter, would it be holding meetings, or canvass- ing, or hiring poster sites. 'We're putting all our energy into doing our party broadcast. The BBC reckon it'll get the same viewing figures as that documentary about the Queen.'

She sent me the script. I was puzzled to notice that, in spite of St Clair's unwilling- ness to have her name associated with prostitution, at least a third of the film was to be about the oldest profession. Still, it sounded a good deal more stimulating than the ghastly B-movies served up by Hugh Hudson and John Schlesinger on behalf of Messrs Kinnock and Major.

Regrettably, however, we shan't have the chance to see it: last week, harried by the Inland Revenue, Lindi St Clair decided that the Corrective Party could not afford to contest 50 seats after all. Although some newspapers reported that she might still stand herself — against Chris Patten, in Bath — last Sunday night she told me that she would probably not bother. Instead, she is exhorting her fans, clients and sex- slaves ('these submissives — they do as I tell them') to switch their votes to the Lib- eral Democrats.

Paddy Ashdown seems a poor substitute for the Spanker of SW5. Asked for the Lib- eral policy on burials at sea and research into obesity, a spokeswoman at Cowley Street told me: 'I'm sorry, 1 haven't the first clue.' After a brief consultation with a col- league, she returned with an official Liber- al statement: 'I understand from our Director of Policy that we have never made any comment on either of those.'

Meanwhile, Lindi is hoping for a hung parliament and another election in the autumn, by which time she ought to have raised the £25,000 necessary for 50 deposits. She boasts that she has 'gone back on the game' with new zeal, charging £300 for an evening and £1,000 for a whole night in her company. (It seems no worse as a fund-raising wheeze than the Labour Party's 000-a-head dinners at the Park Lane Hotel.) If Lindi St Clair can find 25 men who want to pay a grand for the privi- lege of waking up next to a dominatrix, the Corrective Party may hold the balance of power before the year is out.