The first episode of A Very British Scandal took viewers by surprise as they watched The Crown’s Claire Foy enjoy three sex scenes in the first 30 minutes of the first episode – with two different men.
Foy plays the flamboyantly promiscuous Margaret, Duchess of Argyll who was branded a nymphomaniac by her husband Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll (played by Paul Bettany) in their toxic 1963 divorce hearing, which became the longest and most costly of the 20th century.
She claimed that during her marriage, she took on an incredible 88 love interests, including Hollywood stars and ministers.
Last night’s first episode of the series featured Margaret (Foy), seducing an actor at a dinner party, before she romped with her husband in his Scottish home.
The second episode promises more raciness and Claire Foy recreates the famous naked Polaroid of Duchess of Argyll, where she is seen pleading with a naked man whose head was cut out.
The ‘Headless Man’ in the salacious pictures of the duchess disclosed in the divorce case has never been definitively identified. Society ached to know his identity, and the duke was even required to pose naked to prove the torso wasn’t his.
This comes days after Foy claimed that sex scenes made her feel ‘exploited’. She also said that they were the ‘grimmest thing you could do.
16 MILES IN: This episode was the 16th. It featured Margaret (Claire Foy), and an unknown stranger, whom she met at a lively dinner party.
24 MINUTES IN: The second sex scene took place 26 minutes into the episode. This shows Margaret at Inveraray Castle, Scotland, where Ian Campbell, Duke of Argyll, lives.
29 MINUTES – The third scene of sex is just 29 minutes long. Margaret and her father meet Margaret in a kitchen cupboard to discuss their plans for marriage.
Claire Foy is the flamboyantly promiscuous Margaret of Argyll. Her husband, the 11th Duke, was branded a nymphomaniac.
Tonight: The second episode, airing tonight, features the Duchess and the Duchess, creating the infamous Polaroid headless man’ Polaroid. She pleads for a mystery gentleman
Only 16 minutes into episode 1, Margaret met a stranger while attending a party.
Although the identities of these men are not known to the public, the scenes that Margaret is seen with her female friend later suggest that Margaret would sleep regularly with those she had met in the evening.
26 minutes in, the second scene of sex took place. It shows Margaret arriving at Inveraray Castle in Scotland, the home of Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyll.
Louise Timpson was still his wife at the time of the initial meeting.
Who was this headless man, you ask?
The ‘Headless Man’ in the salacious pictures of the duchess disclosed in the divorce case has never been definitively identified. Society ached to know his identity, and the duke was even required to pose naked to prove the torso wasn’t his.
Margaret (pictured), carried the secret identity of the “headless man” to her grave
The suspects included Hollywood actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr and German diplomat Sigismund von Braun, but chief among them was Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence and Winston Churchill’s son-in-law.
A Channel 4 documentary in 2000 claimed that the ‘Headless Man’ was in fact two different men – Sandys and Fairbanks Jr – but it seems this may be one secret Margaret carried with her to her grave.
The Duke and his guest slept together, however. After they had sex, the Duke asked Margaret for marriage.
Just 29 seconds later, the third occurs just as Margaret is about to take Ian to her father in order for him approve of their marriage.
After a brief but funny stop at a cleaner’s cupboard, the pair head upstairs to visit Margaret and her parents.
The series could feature a few sexual scenes, as Foy stated before the launch that she doesn’t like filming them and feels ‘exposed and exploited’.
Foy told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: ‘It’s a really hard line because basically you do feel exploited when you are a woman and you are having to perform fake sex on screen. You feel exploited.
It’s grim. It makes you feel vulnerable. It’s possible to pretend that you don’t feel this way, but unfortunately it is the truth.
Many Twitter users expressed their discomfort at the sight of the three scenes.
User @strutcakes stated that watching A Very British Scandal with my parents wasn’t the best idea. It’s awkward to watch sex scenes in a room with my parents at the age of 37, even though it is very intimate. Many thanks @PhelpsieSarah
Louise Teboul also said the following: “Watching A Very British Scandal together with my mother in law and OH [other half]”I didn’t realize there was so much sex involved in this – it was very awkward.”
Attguest also said that he forgot about how uncomfortable it was to watch sex scenes together with parents up until tonight’s A Very British Scandal.
Michael Wave (user @SzMarsupial) joked that he was sending thoughts and prayers for everyone who’s now watching the British scandal unfold with their families. He didn’t realize how many sex it would contain.
Margaret, born in 1912 as the sole child of an independent Scottish millionaire, was described by Lyndsy Spence, her biographer, as “a daddy’s daughter with an absent father and living with a jealous mom who tried to remind Margaret about every fault she had”.
Margaret became a speech therapist for King George VI, Lionel Logue.
In a sexy scene in her bedroom, the Duchess finds her first love on screen. It reverts to their earlier night of fun around the table.
While the man’s identity is not revealed to the audience, the scenes that Margaret has with her female friend later suggest that Margaret would often sleep with other men who she meets on the same evening.
At just fifteen, David Niven, a future film star, fell in love with her while she was on vacation on the Isle of Wight. After that, her father took her to London and gave her a secret termination.
Young, beautiful, she became a household name. Princes and millionaires wooed her, inviting Cary Grant, Noel Coward, and J Paul Getty to their Mayfair homes. Before her marriage to Charles Sweeny, an Irish stockbroker and widower, she had four more failed relationships.
The couple’s 1933 wedding was glamorous. Traffic stopped for 3 hours at the Brompton Oratory, west London. Another 2,000 people waited to view the 28ft train that Norman Hartnell’s wedding dress.
Despite having a daughter, Frances, and a son, Brian, together, the couple’s relationship broke down after 14 years, with Margaret claiming all Charlie wanted in a spouse was a ‘pretty brainless doll’ and they divorced in 1947.
Margaret and Ian arrive at Inveraray castle in Scotland. After a trip on the boat, they strip off to get on with one another.
At 26 minutes the second scene of sex is shown. He then asks her for his wife while still married to Louise Timpson (who he calls ‘Oui Oui.
In 1951 she wed Ian Douglas Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll, after meeting him on a train at Paris’s Gare du Nord station in 1949. He’d pursued her relentlessly, knowing she was rich while his own estate was worth nothing.
She took pity on him and convinced her father to give him £100,000 to restore his family seat in Scotland, Inveraray Castle. He signed the Deed of Gift that included various goods as security and then promised to marry her once his divorce was finalized.
The couple enjoyed luxury living, including skiing in St Moritz and sailing in the Bahamas. They also spent their time holidaying in St Tropez. Socialites and fashion designers gathered around the duchess.
However, the Duke soon revealed his true colors with accusations of addiction to drugs and gambling as well as an uncontrollable temper.
Twitter was used by viewers to share their shock at the shocking amount of sex that would be displayed in A Very British Scandal. This made for an awkward night with parents.
Both the couple agreed to live separate lives and had an open marriage. Bettany questions, “How many males do you have?” Foy responds, “How many wives do you own?”
Furious at the fact that the duchess wasn’t funding him, he hired private detectives who would follow his wife. He applied for divorce.
A set of blurry Polaroid shots of the Duchess of Cambridge, taken from her Mayfair bathroom mirror. These pictures showed her in her classic triple-string of pearls. One picture shows her with an unknown lover. His head has been removed from the image and he was later known as the “Headless Men”.
She allegedly paid a locksmith for access to her private papers.
The prehistoric legal system of that day, and the fact that her “lovers” were often gay prevented her from sharing her story. She was not likely to be imprisoned.
A Very British Scandal focuses especially on the attitudes towards women at the time, as Margaret was vilified throughout the divorce battle for refusing to go quietly, despite being betrayed by friends and publicly shamed by society.
Signature pearls: Margaret’s necklace is seen in the nude photos taken by her husband
It took four years after he filed for divorce for a verdict to be reached, which granted it to the duke on the grounds of Margaret’s adultery.
She was ordered to pay most of the £50,000 legal bill. At the same time, little was known about him or his six-week-old remarriage with Mathilda, an American woman of wealth.
Margaret fell out of love with Frances after the case. Frances did not want her to oppose divorce proceedings. Margaret’s lavish lifestyle and bad investments led to her financial woes. Although she eventually settled with Frances, Margaret lost her home. Her children placed her in London’s nursing home, where she was left penniless until her death in 1993.
Tonight’s Very British Scandal will continue at 9pm on BBC1
Queen Claire, the disgraced duchess of Cambridge is stunningly convincing. The notorious case of a real-life divorce makes for an engaging BBC drama. CHRISTOPHER STEVENS has given A Very British Scoandal five-stars
By Christopher Stevens
Rating: 
Claire Foy is the first to be seen as the forlornly-imperious Duchess Argyll. She’s a prisoner inside her limousine and surrounded by a hateful public.
Foy is her role in a later, glamorous, and sordid life.
This richly detailed, three-part costume drama which continues tonight portrays her second marriage to the Duke of Argyll – and the notorious divorce battle that ended it.
It’s a pity the drama does not have time to explain the years of fame that came before her disgrace, and which shaped her.
Claire Foy, the forlornly-imperious Duchess Argyll is our first glimpse of Claire Foy. We see her in the back seat of her limousine, surrounded and hated by a hostile public.
Margaret Whigham, a debutante of 17 years, entered London society in 1930 and was immediately viewed as England’s most beautiful girl.
Dozens of cuttings in the Daily Mail archives describe her appearance at every ball – her dresses, her jewellery, the young men jostling around her. Each report includes her photo.
American-raised Margaret, an American-raised Heiress was 14 when her father drove her from Ascot to Eton in order to gather good-looking boys for Margaret’s tennis parties.
The young truants who were the sons of viscounts and earls used to crawl under his Rolls-Royce till they got off school grounds.
Mr and Mrs Whigham believed relentless socialising was the best way to cure Margaret’s stammer, which they feared might turn her into a recluse. You might be surprised to learn that as an adult, her only method of expressing affection was via sex.
After she married American golfer Charles Sweeny, Cole Porter counted her among the world’s greatest glories. His number You’re The Top namechecked the Colosseum, the feet of Fred Astaire… and Mrs Sweeny.
The nation watched in horror as her fight for life continued eight months after she was married.
What few knew then was that she had been pregnant before, aged just 15 – the result of a love affair with a teenage David Niven. To convey all that is an impossible task but Foy manages to hint at so much – not the detail, but the substance.
She was divorced from Sweeny in late 1940s. This is the type we are all familiar with today.
Most viewers will see that Captain Ian Campbell, a raffish war hero, approaches Bettany on a train. He is very dangerous. She can only see how seductive that danger is.
She is wearing a triple string of pearls around her neck – a piece of jewellery that will acquire extra significance later.
While he’s still married, he wouldn’t mind asking his father Richard McCabe to lend a hand… Campbell is in the making and Margaret doesn’t see it, even though she writes cheques for his creditors.
Bettany is the Duke and shows no sympathy. He is a Second World War vet or not. His charm and redeeming grace are lacking. We can see the man at his hobby of collecting butterflies and mounting them onto a board using a pin through his thorax.
It is shocking to see the extent of his cruelty. His second American wife Louise (Sophia Myles) is not his primary goal.
Everyone knows her as Oui Oui, because she agrees to everything – though Margaret childishly calls her Wee Wee. Campbell anticipates that his new duchess will finance the restorations of castles for his Oui-Oui children.
‘Here’s a thought, Margaret,’ he tells her, mocking her stammer with drunken nastiness. ‘Pay the b-b-bills – it’s what you’re for.’
That attack wounds her, because it exposes Margaret’s deepest fears about herself. It even gives shape to the viewers’ unconscious thoughts. Why is she there?
Margaret Whigham, a debutante of 17 years, entered London society as a beautiful young woman.
She is 20 years older than her debutante years and lives in a pre-war, different world. While her pleasures may be vapid, those of her friendship are more sarcastic.
She is compared to a sexually addicted chimpanzee. Even her mother (Phoebe Nicholls) has nothing but contempt for her: ‘My daughter, an adulteress, a round-heel – the squalor of it.’
That word ‘round-heel’ sums up the pious hypocrisy of the era. This is 1920s slang for a woman that stomps her back when she touches it.
She was the most hated woman in Britain after her divorce from the Duke. According to her husband, she was accused of having had dozens of affairs: He estimated it at 88.
This drama captures that sense of national outrage in those opening shots, as the duchess’s car is besieged on a London street by onlookers who hurl abuse and spit at the windows.
Captain Ian Campbell referred to her as a “nymphomaniac” and she was accused of forgery theft violence drug-taking secret recording and corruption.
Foy’s rigidity mixes fear and froideur, making Margaret defiant yet pitiful. She was often a lonely person in the beginning, trying to entertain her stepchildren, or engaging in a one-night-stand after a party. But she didn’t feel more isolated when the public looked at her.
We are used to watching Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. This role is shockingly well-suited for Claire Foy. This Queen is a perfect example of what a traditional ruler class should be like.
But strip away the sense of duty and decency, and what you are left with is the Duchess of Argyll – riches without real value, privilege without a raison d’etre.
All she’s good for is sex. These scenes were shot with taste, or without excessive emphasis on exploitation.
Foy has said how uncomfortable they made her feel: ‘It’s grim, the grimmest thing you can do. If you are a female and have to show fake sex, it can make you feel exploited. You feel exposed.’
You can feel the shame and discomfort she radiates until you experience it yourself. The Duchess was honest about the sex and the humiliation.
BBC1 will continue to air A Very British Scandal tomorrow night at 9pm.