It was the divorce that gripped Britain, involving photographs of the Duchess of Argyll performing oral sex. But, says the writer of the BBC’s new drama, the woman behind the headlines was unfairly vilified
‘Here’s the thing,” says Sarah Phelps, talking about the Duchess of Argyll. “The first time I heard of her, she was referred to as The Blowjob Duchess.” The screenwriter has made this duchess, Margaret of Argyll, the heroine of A Very British Scandal, a new BBC drama starring Claire Foy and Paul Bettany as the aristos whose divorce transfixed the nation in 1963.
Thanks to a censorious judge, the vile behaviour of the duke, a series of photographs showing the duchess performing fellatio on an unidentified man and her own altruistic, if high-handed, refusal to defend herself, the sexual ins and outs of this separation are a matter of incredibly detailed historical record. “It was,” says Phelps,” all about, ‘Who’s the man?’, ‘Who’s the headless man in the photos?’, ‘How many men did she fuck?’, ‘Who was she blowing?’ And I almost thought, ‘I actually don’t give a shit. I want to know about her. I want to know who she was.’ So the blowjob matters to me in one way. But it matters less in the prurient sense of needing to know who was on the other end of that erection.”
