Today, the British press has been hot on the heels of a sexy scandal: Sally Bercow, the wife of House of Commons speaker John Bercow, posed for a picture in what looks like nothing but a bedsheet. She was in a hotel room in front of the Houses of Parliament and the Thames River. The Telegraph has Bercow in all her glory.
And NPR's David Greene reports from London:
Her photo was all over the morning papers, and it was the talk of morning TV. The 41 year-old, who once ran unsuccessfully for her own seat in Parliament, did the photo shoot for the London Evening Standard. The cream-colored bed sheet appeared to be all she had on. Exposing one bare leg, she gazed into the camera, while reaching back to give her strawberry blond hair a tussle. Bercow told the BBC that maybe this wasn't the best idea, that she was a "fool" to agree to pose in a bedsheet.
"I didn't really think through the implications," she said. "I didn't know I was going to be photographed in a sheet until I got there."
Yet, she didn't exactly mind how things turned out.
"I actually think it's quite a tasteful photograph," she said. "And you know as I say it was all meant to be a bit of harmless fun but the trouble is because I am married to the speaker, whatever I do is put in the media and used to get at him."
As for Speaker Bercow, these were already rocky times. Bercow had an uncomfortable relationship with his own Conservative party — including Prime Minister David Cameron, who recently made a crack about how the diminutive speaker resembled a dwarf.
But Mrs. Bercow talked of how her husband has benfited from the sexiness of power. In the article that went alongside her photo, she said far more women have hit on him since he became speaker. The story, and photo, highlight "London's Sexiest Places." Mrs. Bercow not only loved posing in front of Westminster Palace. She added: "I never realized how sexy I would find living under Big Ben."
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