MAP Forum

For half a century or more, Sir Clement Freud and his wife Jill presented a wholesome image of middle-class respectability, radiating a benign pleasure at the successes of their high-achieving family.

Appearances, however, were deceptive. Their marriage of almost 60 years was far from conventional.

Seven years after his death, Sir Clement, once one of the most popular and enduring figures in broadcasting and public life, was unmasked as a serial sexual predator and paedophile who had fathered a secret love-child with his family’s teenage nanny.

As for Lady Freud – whose death aged 98 was announced this week – she, too, had her secrets. In 2001 it was revealed that she’d had a long affair with a teenage boy during the 1970s. Jill was 47 when it began and her lover, Jonathan Self, elder brother of fashionable novelist Will Self, was just 16.

She never publicly commented on Self’s revelations, which were contained in a shocking memoir of his unhappy childhood.