The rumor mill was in full swing when it emerged that the publisher of The Spectator had a scandalous affair with David Blunkett. Now the truth about the ‘FOURTH’ man in her romantic menage can be revealed

Twenty years ago, the name was on everyone’s lips for a few heady weeks. Amid a frenzy of intrigue and disloyalty, Spectator magazine, known for its high-minded political reporting, lurched with an altogether more racist reputation.

Stories of sexual pranks and casual adultery pouring out of the weekly’s offices in central London were so common that it was dubbed ‘The Sextator’.

Many of these gossip stories featured some of the better-known columnists, but the most lurid of all concerned the tangled love life of the magazine’s married publisher, Kimberly Quinn, who was revealed to have had an affair with the blind former Labor Home Secretary David Blunkett. .

She was also involved with parliamentary sketchwriter and broadcaster Simon Hoggart and, as obituaries confirmed yesterday, Labor multimillionaire Sandy Leitch.

Lord Leitch, who died last month aged 76, was mocked as ‘the fourth man’ in this exotic romantic ménage.

The bespectacled, soft-spoken entrepreneur and personal finance magnate was a most unlikely Romeo. Like his good friend, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he was a model of Scottish rectitude. Or so it seemed.

But for a torrid few months after divorcing his first wife and before he met his second, the miner’s son was a stain on the hostess’s bedpost.

It was said that he was so embarrassed when the episode became public that he caused it to be removed from his Wikipedia article.

Fortunately for Lord Leitch, the ridicule quickly subsided when his unmasking coincided with the news that Mr Blunkett had been confirmed as the father of Ms Quinn’s then two-year-old son following a legally binding DNA test.

However, he couldn’t completely escape the saga, which by the time it all blew over had provided enough material for a bawdy farce: Who’s the Dad? – written by two theater critics from The Spectator itself.

The former insurance company chief is said to have met Ms Quinn – then married to her first husband, investment banker Michael Fortier – in 1996, the same year he divorced his first wife Valerie Hodson, mother of his three eldest children. His company, Allied Dunbar, sponsored the Spectator’s annual political lecture.

Power and politics have always been a formidable aphrodisiac. And at the time, the then humble Mr Leitch was a rising figure in the New Labor establishment and a friend of the then Prince Charles. The coquettish Mrs. Quinn was entranced. The two reportedly began a physical relationship sometime in 1999.

When Allied Dunbar was acquired by Zurich Financial Services UK in 2001, Leitch, who was appointed CEO, began sponsoring the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards. And it was at one of those awards lunches that the Scot, ironically, introduced Blunkett – now Lord Blunkett – as guest of honour.

It was around this time that the former minister had replaced him as Mrs Quinn’s lover. She is said to have mischievously remarked, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have sex with a blind man.”

Mr Blunkett later announced that Leitch would become chairman of the government’s New Deal Taskforce and was elevated to the House of Lords by Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was even introduced to the Lords by Blair’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy.

Not long after, in 2002, Leitch met Noelle Dowd, a business strategist twenty years his junior. They married the following year and had three children; the affair with Kimberly was history – or so he hoped.

But in 2004, news of her relationship with Blunkett, which had ended bitterly, was sensationally revealed by the now defunct News of the World. Shortly afterwards news broke of her feud with Mr Hoggart, who also worked at the Spectator.

Suddenly no secrets at the magazine were safe from exposure and it was only a matter of time before then-editor Boris Johnson’s affair with Petronella Wyatt, daughter of diarist and former Labor grandfather Lord Wyatt of Weeford, would be exposed.

Johnson first came into contact with Petronella, then deputy editor of the magazine, when he was appointed editor.

‘Petsy’, then 34, was a well-known figure in her own right in London: perhaps wrongly described as a ‘pouting socialite’. Her love life had been just as colorful. She is known for her admiration of older men and once complained about being chased by “a fat Arab who thinks he’s engaged to me.”

Another figure who found his love life in the crosshairs of media speculation was the magazine’s brilliant columnist, Rod Liddle. Mr Liddle left his then-wife for an assistant at the magazine, who was 21 years his junior and later became pregnant with his child. It’s only fair to point out that the two have been very happily married for many years now.

Is it any wonder someone wants to turn all this pulsating sexual tension into a play? Yet it is not difficult to imagine how awkward Lord Leitch must have found it when his name was linked to the shady revelations.

After all, he was not a media playboy, but a serious City figure who, despite his impoverished background – his father died when he was 18 months old and his mother was a cleaner – had made something of his life.

His involvement with Kimberly, whose second husband was respected Vogue magazine executive Stephen Quinn, was hardly a secret. She had attended parties at Leitch’s £2million mansion near the Royal Albert Hall and met one of his daughters, Jacqueline.

When his link to the femme fatale came to light, his first wife, who met her husband when she was 20, said: ‘All I know is that my daughter said she saw Kimberly at one of Sandy’s parties. Since Jacqueline didn’t know who she was, she said, “Who is that?” Someone at the party said something about the Spectator.

‘As soon as Jacqueline read about Kimberly Quinn and David Blunkett in the papers, she called me to tell me about the party.

‘Sandy is a different man than the one I knew before. He is so powerful and rich now. I don’t know if he would be attracted to Kimberly.

‘When I first met him, he was smart, but poor. My father even gave him financial help.

“Sandy used to be a family man, but then he became a workaholic, so I divorced him.”

After his walk-on role in the Spectator frol, obscurity in the insurance world beckoned to Lord Leitch. It took four years for him to speak in the House of Lords and in 2015 he was named as one of 29 peers who did not speak in the Lords for the entire parliament from 2010 to 2015.

But not once did he speak publicly about his Kimberly episode.