If the last-gasp middle-aged affair between John and Edwina was asprecious as Currie says, then she is betraying its intimacy by revealing it now, writes Kathryn Holmquist
JFK and Marilyn, Bill and Monica, Mellor and de Sanchez . . . However sleazy those affairs, Edwina and John still beggar belief. Even Charles and Camilla have more cachet. Something about Edwina and John is oh-so-utilitarian.
The ambitious and driven Currie may have seen her passion in the corridors of power as the epitome of sexual excitement, but frankly, for most of us, her breathy diary entry - "I wish my flat was filled with one big man in his blue underpants" - doesn't quite do it.
Then again, Tory turn-ons tend to be rather strange.
Politicians are "weird", Currie told Trevor McDonald in an "exclusive" interview on Wednesday night. "There was something devilish in us that was amused by sitting on the front benches making arrangements," she added. Put yourself in her place, and you can almost understand how "there's no vote after 7p.m. - are you free?" might be a scintillating chat-up line.
In fact, politicians are no different to anyone else. Currie clings to the belief that her romantic liaison is a "footnote in history". It's the only footnote she'll get, she seems to have realised. But anyone who has ever had a secret affair would like to believe that their dalliance was of global importance. It's part of the buzz. Betraying your family, your spouse and your party is a turn-on for some people. They need sex to be naughty for it to be sex. Currie and Major's secret sex life was the salmonella in the Tory Party eggs. Pity the British public are only finding out about it now, because if they'd known about it then, the entire course of British history would have been changed.
Major made a great show of refusing to countenance Tory philanderings, while not much earlier he had been having a long-standing affair. Kinky is one word for it. Pathetic is another.
Whichever way, Major and Currie knew their affair should never be made public if they were to retain their reputations. There's no greater turn-on.
We're not just talking about damaged marriages, traumatised children and decimated finances here. We're talking about the ultimate frisson: changing the course of history.
Combine that with the other fundamental ingredient, middle age, when there's a feeling that if we don't do it now, we never will. The sexual body's last gasp can be a mid-life affair. It's a temporary solution for people whose lives are not well-rounded, who lack intimacy in other areas and who believe that grabbing a quickie over a glass of tomato juice with a colleague is the closest they'll ever get to nirvana.
Fooling the media, family members and party colleagues was an aphrodisiac for Edwina. John hasn't told us how he felt, except that he is ashamed.
Edwina justifies shaming her ex-lover by saying that history must record the truth, yet this truth is just another power trip, just another book tour.
It takes a certain, frightening sense of imagination to make sexual capital out of two politicians having it off after question time. Currie is Victorian in her romantic descriptions: "He held my hand and squeezed it, even though other people were there." I could say the same about my obstetrician.
This romantic "spin" that Currie gives her liaison with Major is essential to the mid-life affair. When revealed, the affair may look sleazy to everybody else, but to the people involved it is high romance.
Artists claim that it fuels their creativity. Managing directors justify affairs as having saved their marriages. Currie claims that she nurtured Major and that, without her, he never would have become party leader. She was working in the interest of the greater good in having the affair, and reinforcing even greater ideals in ending the affair before anyone found out, she tells us.
So if her motivation was so noble, why is she telling us all about it 15 years later? She wants to sell books, number one. Number two, she's angry.
When Major left her out of his political memoirs, not to mention his Cabinet, she was stung. When he added the further insult that he was "ashamed" of their affair, she became as angry as a bee, ready to sting with all her might and make honey in the process.
If the affair between the two of them was so precious, and so well-guarded that nobody ever found out about it, then Currie is surely betraying its beautiful intimacy by revealing it now. She is also hurting her own children, who are mystified by the whole thing, according to her own account. She is, just as irresponsibly, causing further hurt to Norma Major who, her husband says, knew about the affair long ago.
Norma is a woman whose husband didn't come home most nights when he was grappling for power. He had plenty of excuses: parliamentary votes, committee meetings, ambition. Currie says that Major was still essentially a warm, tactile little boy from Brixton who needed love and encouragement. Norma was surely giving him plenty of that. He wouldn't have climbed so high in public life if she hadn't been giving him those things. Moreover, Norma was there for the photocalls, perfectly turned out.
You could say Norma is a classic enabler, willing to put up with the downsides of her husband's addiction (to power, in this case) in return for the benefits (status and money). But maybe that's unfair. As is the case for many women in her position, standing up to her husband would mean losing everything. Norma is not a Cherie Blair or Hilary Clinton with her own power agenda to sell.
Her career is to be Mrs John Major. If Norma left Major, one punishment would be the media coverage of the split, when everything would come out. A worse punishment would be that she would lose her career.
Currie can handle the flak, because she's being paid to by every person who buys her book.