Geoffrey Robertson QC: 'The police wasted a lot of taxpayers' money in bringing Cynthia Payne to trial'

'Madame Cyn' – who died this week – made prostitution seem like a lark for pensioners. Geoffrey Robertson QC, her defence barrister, salutes an accidental campaigner

In the pink: Cynthia Payne at home in Ambleside Avenue (Rex Features)

"If you had not asked that question," moaned a Lord Justice of Appeal as I attempted to overturn the over-severe 18-month prison sentence on Cynthia Payne, "this case would have attracted four lines in the Streatham Gazette." The offending question, to the policeman who led the raid on her lace-curtained home in this leafy south London suburb, had featured on the front page of every newspaper. I had been instructed to not reveal the identities of the "middle-aged and elderly men" in the house's bedrooms and on its stairs, clutching their luncheon vouchers. But I did ask about their occupations –and he agreed with me that they included "a peer of the realm, an MP, a number of solicitors and company directors and several vicars," (all of whom, of course, were released without charge).

"And there would have been no cartoons," groaned another Lord Justice. My favourite depicted a vicar in bed with a prostitute, confronted by a perplexed police officer. "I demand to see my solicitor," says the vicar, "who is in the next bedroom". If I hadn't asked that question, I mused (in Rumpole-like voiceover) the Court of Appeal would not be sitting in record time, in the law vacation, to reduce by 12 months a sentence which the media thought epitomised British sexual hypocrisy. Time magazine devoted an essay to it, likening the judge to the "rascal beadle" of King Lear ("Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.") Tabloids throughout the world took up the point. I was telephoned by my mother, from Sydney: "You have made the front page of Mr Murdoch's newspaper, dear. Thank goodness they've spelled your name wrong."

Cynthia Payne had come before Inner London Sessions on a charge of "keeping a disorderly house" (although the evidence showed that it was very orderly) at Ambleside Avenue, Streatham, south London. She had run up a few minor convictions in a sad and seedy life before she met a former RAF squadron leader with a penchant for domestic service, and their home had become a venue for parties featuring the exchange of sexual services between consenting adults. On such nights, alleged the prosecutor, it became "a well-run bawdy house" with women who were not young but "could be described as amateurs taking part to raise money for Christmas". No horses had been frightened and several of the neighbours testified to being unaware of anything amiss. Nonetheless, 30 policemen had staked out her home for months, secretly observing 259 men – "60 and balding"; "in trilby hat"; "white shirt and tie"; "Rover car"; "briefcase"; "smoking a pipe" etc. "So it goes on in the police observations," I told the judge: "Endless parades of suburban male respectability beating a path to her door... they took their pleasures and departed, and she stands alone in the dock."

The judge was unimpressed by my quotations from the Wolfenden Report, which had patiently explained that if there were no customers there would be no prostitutes, or my mitigation that she was providing women with a "safe house" away from dangers on the streets or the risk of a crazed client loose in the "one-woman" apartments that the law allowed. This argument, in the mind of a judge in 1980, probably aggravated her offence and he grimaced defensively whenever I reminded him of the unfairness of sending her to prison while her customers escaped punishment. That, after all, was what always happened to sex workers in this class of offence. She had all sorts of medical problems, and had pleaded guilty but this cut no ice. Eighteen months' imprisonment was, as the Court of Appeal reluctantly accepted in the face of media condemnation, a disproportionate punishment.

Cynthia was soon out of Holloway, her six-month sentence cut in half for "good behaviour". She was picked up by a former client in a Rolls-Royce and rushed to the BBC Newsnight studio. "Why," her interlocutor solemnly asked, "did you refuse to name your famous clients?" She paused, as if for a deep thought, and replied: "Well, me morals is low. But me ethics is high." This distinction has eluded philosophers for centuries, and "Madame Cyn's" future on the chat-show circuit was assured.

Emboldened by her fame, and by public tolerance, she returned some years later to hosting her parties. Foolishly, the police raided and wasted a lot of taxpayers' money in bringing her to a lengthy trial. The first beneficiary was the newly launched Independent, which devoted pages every day to Court Reporter Heather Mills's explicit accounts of the evidence. In spite of the directions of another unamused judge, the jury had no hesitation in acquitting.

Emboldened by fame: Cynthia Payne in 1980 (Getty Images)

This common-sense verdict has served to discourage police forces from invading the privacy of consenting adults – their efforts were made a laughing stock whenever Cynthia appeared on television or wrote books. But the laws against prostitution since 1980 have not changed much and are still working unfairly. Women who sell sex are prosecuted (this has recently been increasing) while men (unless caught exploiting or trafficking) generally walk free. Parliament lacks the gumption to take any action at all, even to decriminalise prostitution and certainly not to permit the kind of "safe bawdy house" that Cynthia was providing.

Some years after her release came the inevitable book (An English Madam) and the inevitable film (Personal Services). Terry Jones, the producer, wanted to end it with her prison sentence being pronounced by the judge at London Sessions – whom the viewer suddenly recognises as the same man who, early in the film, was her first client.

He asked me to advise on libel risks and I pronounced them obvious and enormous. He solved the problem creatively, by changing the scene to one in which the camera pans around the court to reveal every male in it – judges, barristers, solicitors, clerks and ushers – as her former clients.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, is author of 'The Justice Game' (Vintage)