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Vaz week two: MoS interviews wife, his misleading attack on reporter’s CV, new Sunday Mirror interview with prostitutes

By Dominic Ponsford

The Sunday Mirror has published a further interview with the two Eastern European male prostitutes who have revealed that Keith Vaz MP was one of their clients.

The men have now returned to their home country.

Last week’s Sunday Mirror exposé prompted Vaz to step down from his role as chairman of the Commons home affairs committee.

One of the men told the paper this week: “No one wants to do this, to sell their body. It’s a shame, people are only doing this when they have to, when they don’t have a choice and they can’t get a job or money.

“I treated this as some kind of extra money. Sex workers do it because they are desperate, they can’t afford to live.”

One of the men also said: “Some people may be upset by what we did. But we feel exposing a public person like Vaz is the right thing.

“Vaz has two lives – Jim [the name he gave them] and Keith. He’s the biggest liar I’ve ever met – tricking people from every side so he can get the benefits.”

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Sunday Times journalist Andrew Gilligan has written about his time working for Vaz as an 18-year-old intern in 1987.

He said: “Most of Vaz’s staff, me included, knew he was bisexual. We took the view that it was none of our business, or anybody else’s, and I’m sure we were right.

“In those still very homophobic days, with only one out MP, it was common, and perhaps often necessary, for politicians to be misleading about their sexuality.

“What we didn’t like about Vaz was the way he treated us. When I got something wrong, he would accuse me of messing up because of racism.”

He added: “Two decades later, Vaz attacked me at a meeting of Labour’s national executive committee as someone he’d sacked for ‘forging references on his CV’. This came as a surprise to me, since as an 18-year-old student I’d never submitted references or a CV, forged or otherwise.”

The Mail on Sunday yesterday published an interview with Vaz’s wife in which she spoke about how the story had devastated the family. She said would stick by her husband.

She said: “Keith is very down. What’s happened is so huge and the fallout was so huge that it was his penance. He loved his role and he had to face losing that.”

She also told the paper: “I think he was suicidal. We have to look after our own. I am angry with him but my love is greater. Yet if it happens again, I am done.”

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