Profile: Kimberley Quinn

Many among London's media and political classes have enjoyed the view from Kimberly Quinn's roof terrace. It is on the top floor of her Mayfair townhouse, off the main bedroom, and affords wide-ranging views of the West End.

She would lead her party guests there, drink in hand, and in her most effusive, expansive manner wave an arm over the vista and declare: "This is my domain!"

Alas, no more. As Sir Alan Budd reports on former home secretary David Blunkett's role in the saga of Mrs Quinn's nanny, Kimberly is tucked up alone on a sofa in a room at the back of the house, behind firmly closed shutters.

The three-storey home has become a place of internment, surrounded by photographers, besieged by news teams. Once she revelled in the marvellous view; now she hardly dare glance from a window. Since she arrived home at the weekend after a spell in hospital she has not left the house.

London is in party mood and the gatherings to which she would once have rushed are taking place without her. When Tory businessman Henry Keswick held his Christmas party at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge last night, Kimberly was nowhere to be seen. Once she would have been an automatic guest. But while she was not there in person, she was certainly there as an item of conversation. One guest said: "Everyone was talking about her." She may not have been pleased to learn what they are saying."

Her absence was given added piquancy by the stunning presence of her arch-rival, Petronella Wyatt. Ms Wyatt, it may be recalled, revealed on Sunday that she had taken Kimberly to dine with David Blunkett, where Kimberly had informed the bedazzled Home Secretary that she had often wondered what it was like to have sex with a blind man. The rest, as we now know, is history.

Wyatt's revelations say as much about her own relationship with Kimberly as they do about Mr Blunkett's frailties. The two women maintained a civilised friendship, but it was noticeably cool, because it is said, Kimberly was wildly jealous of Wyatt's attractiveness to men. She was especially envious, it is said, of Wyatt's slender legs which, for the record, were on dazzling display at the Keswick party. She appeared in a short black dress which - with matching high-heeled shoes - revealed her long limbs to their full advantage.

Unflattering comparisons with Wyatt were symptomatic of a new mood that has taken hold since the beginning of the Blunkett saga. While many were once prepared to give Kimberly the benefit of the doubt, the apparently unlimited scope of her predatory sexual liaisons have changed hearts and minds.

The word "scorpion" was one of several pejorative terms used to describe her at the party in the Mandarin ballroom last night. And at another literary gathering across town, stories were swapped of Kimberly's extraordinary networking and cultivation of people she felt would be useful.

One guest recalled how she astonished a celebrated media figure by regaling her, within three minutes of meeting, with intimate details of her IVF treatment. At another gathering of hacks, there was ribald laughter when the host rose to say: "If anyone here has NOT slept with Kimberly Quinn, would they kindly stand." In keeping with the spirit of the request, only the women stood up.

THAT this woman who tried so hard to make herself a presence in London's serious political and media circles should now become the object of ridicule, shows just how severe the reaction against her has become.One of her friends said: "I think even those who supported her most now realise her behaviour was unconscionable."

Many of the women who were at first flattered by the close-up and personal, in-your-face eye contact at which Kimberly excelled, are now wondering whether she attempted to bed their husband. One - the wife of a distinguished journalist and author - might be reassured to learn that after Kimberly's flirtatious advances to her husband fell on stony ground, Kimberly took to saying he had " a droopy bottom". It was the reaction of a petulant teenager and it may offer a clue to what may be the most perplexing question about Kimberly Quinn - why is she like that?

"The simple answer is she never grew up," one friend said. "She is still the girl who wants to be the prom queen. Her mother always told her she wasn't beautiful; she was always reminded her sister Jennifer was more attractive."

When the girls were teenagers together in America, Jennifer was the one who had her pick of the "jocks" , the good-looking, athletic types. Kimberly, with her huge spectacles and rather dumpy figure, concentrated on more cerebral prospects. It was a habit she never lost, apparently. All her London conquests - publicly revealed and otherwise - have been older and not especially attractive men.

It is a measure of how much opprobrium she has brought upon herself that as the festive season reaches its climax, this is a topic for bawdy party talk. But perhaps the harshest judgment of Kimberly Quinn is the one she reserves for herself.

She told a friend recently: "I had such a lovely life," she said, "and I've thrown it all away."