Paul Thomas: British sex scandals lack comedy and farce

Rolf Harris was a remorseless predator who exploited his celebrity in order to abuse. Photo / AP

There should be a sign at Heathrow Airport: "Warning - Sex scandal in progress." Every now and again England finds itself between scandals, but these hiatuses are like outbreaks of peace in the Middle East: a temporary suspension of normal service.

The first sex scandal of the modern era was the 1963 Profumo Affair, now preserved for posterity in the form of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Stephen Ward. (Ward, a society osteopath, set things in motion by introducing good-time girl Christine Keeler to John Profumo, a junior minister. Ward subsequently committed suicide after being convicted of living off immoral earnings, a verdict now seen as a travesty.)

Since then, sex scandals have come thick and fast - and, as often as not, weird. While they invariably involved public disgrace and placed immense strain on the families of those involved, there was usually a comical or at least farcical aspect.

For instance, there was the minister who enjoyed romping with his mistress kitted out in Chelsea football club gear. (Him not her; it's not known which team she supported.) There was the Conservative Party's launch of a Back to Basics family values campaign swiftly followed by revelations that Tory MPs were up to their necks in a world of kink, including auto-erotic asphyxiation.

And there was (married) Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe tried for conspiring to murder his homosexual lover. (He got off, a verdict that raised as many eyebrows as O.J. Simpson's acquittal.) In the grand tradition of best-laid plans, a hitman hired to silence the increasingly indiscreet ex-boyfriend managed instead to take out his great dane. In 1974 a significant proportion of the British public seemed to regard that as the greater of two evils.

But there is no vestige of levity in recent sex scandals involving Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. Rather than hypocritical politicians hoist on their own petards, these two were remorseless predators who exploited their celebrity and zany public personas to systematically abuse the impressionable and vulnerable. Despite the sickening scale of Savile's predations, these scandals can be compartmentalised: he and Harris and the others were thoroughly rotten individuals prowling the self-contained, otherworldly sphere of show business.

The implications of the latest sex scandals are far wider and therefore more disturbing.

A just-concluded investigation of paedophilia involving every police force in the UK resulted in 660 arrests. Only 39 of those arrested were registered sex offenders. This may be just the tip of the iceberg: investigators identified a further 10,000 individuals whom they suspect of dealing in or consuming child pornography.

And there's increasing evidence that a paedophile network centred on Parliament and the upper echelons of the civil service operated with impunity for several decades, secure in the knowledge that any attempt to investigate their activities would be stifled at birth.

While this sounds straight out of True Detective (albeit thus far without the ritual murders), there is some substance to it. It has emerged that 114 files relating to paedophiles in high places have disappeared and were presumably destroyed. They included a 40 page dossier compiled by a Tory MP and personally handed to the Home Secretary.

Liberal MP Cyril Smith weighed 184kg and, as enormously fat men tend to be, was regarded as a jolly, big-hearted, larger-than-life sort of fellow. In fact, he was the subject of no fewer than 144 complaints of abusive behaviour towards boys. Smith, who died in 2010, was never prosecuted even though police now admit the evidence against him was overwhelming.

The reverberations of this scandal have already shaken a few pillars of the establishment. Baroness Butler-Sloss, a pioneering figure in the British judiciary, was appointed to conduct an overarching review. The Government either didn't know or didn't care that, as Attorney-General, her late brother opted not to prosecute a senior civil servant who, despite apparently being a deputy director of MI6, was careless enough to leave an envelope full of child porn on a London bus. Butler-Sloss herself was already offside with child protection campaigners for overturning decisions authorising local authorities to share information on child sex offenders.

Not surprisingly, the Baroness was gone by lunchtime.

One wonders where it will end and what state Britain will be left in. Already erstwhile national treasure Stephen Fry has been hammered for criticising the open-ended nature of the investigations and championing the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Police, meanwhile, are increasingly concerned that they will be inundated to the point of dysfunction by the rising flood of allegations of historic abuse.

One thing seems certain: in 50 years' time West End audiences won't be tapping their toes to Jim'll Fix It: The Musical or The Predators of Parliament.