“Lord Browne’s Rent Boy”

If there's anything we love more than a celebrity sex scandal, it's a celebrity sex scandal that somehow relates, however tenuously, to something we've posted about on Fleshbot before. That's why we've been devouring the ongoing coverage about the brouhaha concerning Lord John Browne, who until last week was chief executive of BP and one of the most respected business leaders in the world. That is, until it was revealed that the semi-closeted oil tycoon lied to a High Court judge about how he met his Canadian ex-boyfriend Jeff Chevalier. It turns out their long term affair began as hourly assignations via the escort site Suited and Booted, favorably reviewed on these pages last December but described as a "seedy website" in The Mail on Sunday (imagine!) in a sidebar addition to a scorching tell-all by the former rentboy. "Littered with images of naked and seminaked men, some of them in bizarre fetish gear, many in suggestive poses, the home of 'London's premier escort agency' is unlikely to have been material Lord Browne would have been trawling from his polished desk at BP," the editors noted. "In fact security levels on many company computer systems would restrict access to the site, which is pornographic in parts."

Unfortunately, BP's cyber security policies and Lord Browne's laptop are central to his downfall: Chevalier has produced an official BP laptop presented to him by his former sugar daddy, as well as Browne's user ID and password and access to top-secret documents. And that's hardly the most damning revelation so far: that award goes to the "pillow talk" between the $300/hour "versatile" escort and his super-rich lover. "Lord Browne considered a human life at BP was only worth spending [$2 million USD] to protect. Lord Browne considered any security or safety measures at drilling sites or refineries costing more than that were not worth the money." (Not that we're exactly crying over a tycoon's fall from grace; we're more upset over the fact that the Suited and Booted website is currently down "due to technical reasons". Where are we going to shop for companions to have our own sex scandals with now?)-RM

· "The TRUE story about Lord Browne - by ex-rent boy lover" and "Seedy website at centre of Lord Browne's lie" (mailonsunday.co.uk)
· "Lord Browne's Rent Boy" (canada.com)

Previously: Suited and Booted: London Escort Agency