It is a long time since, as an innocent youngster, I asked my parents at the dinner table what was meant by "immoral earnings", an interesting phrase which was popping up regularly in the papers at the time.
Unfortunately there were younger and even more innocent siblings present, and so I did not learn on that occasion how the the infamous Dr Stephen Ward made some extra money on the side, apart from his "moral" earnings as a "Marylebone osteopath" as he is for ever described (leaving one to wonder if Marylebone was his specialisation rather than his address).
Though she has written before about the Profumo affair, Christine Keeler has now provided her own fuller account of the scandal, in the rather innocently-titled book, The Truth at Last: My Story (Sidgwick & Jackson, UK£16.99). It is cowritten, or ghost-written, by Douglas Thompson.
Naturally enough, a book title like that tempts fate, and journalist-reviewers cynical by nature, and Ms Keeler's account of the affair which brought down the Macmillan government nearly 40 years ago has come in for rather rough treatment in the press.
Her claim that she had a central role in a Cold War spy ring (with the likes of Sir Anthony Blunt, MI5 chief Roger Hollis and a naval attache at the Russian embassy in London), rather than merely providing sexual amusement, has been treated with general derision. She is described as a moaner and a whinger, as "banal", and, worse, as a "rather shoddy woman".
Well, that's as may be. According to Ms Keeler, now 57, she was "set up by the authorities and branded in court as a prostitute, but that was to keep me quiet, to stop me telling the truth. I was not the common tart they tried to paint me."
A smart aleck might say Ms Keeler was quite an uncommon tart, since she was certainly very beautiful, by her own admission very promiscuous, and never actually put a price on her sexual favours: as she admitted in a recent London Independent interview, "OK, I knew men coming over were going to give me money, but you couldn't phone me anywhere."
Hardly a character defence, m'lud. But those who recall the Profumo affair will remember above all the stench of hypocrisy from the British establishment, its lies (particularly those of Lord Astor and of the minister for war, John Profumo) and its supreme self-righteousness.
The case it made against Stephen Ward (certainly a creepy, manipulative personality) is now grudgingly accepted as having been vindictive in the extreme, and led directly to his suicide.
So it is not too difficult to believe that, as Keeler claims, the late Lord Denning deliberately destroyed her character in his whitewash report on the Ward case: "I was ignored, sidelined, disparaged as a liar, so that he could claim there had been no security risk."
In her book, Christine Keeler also claims to have been made pregnant by John Profumo. She never told him, and had a £25 abortion. The British press reaction has been to hold up its hands in horror, not at any grief Ms Keeler may have suffered in secret then or since, but at the upset the news will bring to the Profumo family.
John Profumo is now 85. For the past 40-odd years since his disgrace and resignation from the Macmillan government, he has worked for charity in London's East End. A friend of the family was quoted as saying: "It is outrageous that he is still being persecuted after all these years."
Not everyone would agree that Ms Keeler's assertion amounts to persecution. After all, John Profumo's rehabilitation in the eyes of the British public is long complete, and in the eyes of the establishment too, since he joined the honours list some years ago.
Ms Keeler on the other hand - even though she has done work with the anti-drugs group Release - remains a disgraced outsider, still sidelined and disparaged. At best she is patronised.
Despite her miserable early life, her two broken marriages, a mother who wants nothing to do with her and a son who has disowned her, the focus has always remained on her 19th year. That seems a form of persecution, even if some will say she has brought it on herself - and continues to do so with this latest book.
Others, reading the recent press coverage of her story by media much more allied with insider power and influence than it was in the 1960s, will still get that old whiff of British establishment hypocrisy, vindictiveness and self-righteousness.