'Currie acted like cheap trollop'

SENIOR Conservatives and close friends of John Major yesterday rallied around the former premier as more details emerged of his four-year affair with Edwina Currie.

The bombshell disclosure by Mrs Currie, that she and Mr Major were lovers between 1984 and 1988, when she was a junior Health Minister and he was in the Whips Office, emerged at the weekend as The Times published extracts from her diaries.

The book, which it is estimated, could earn Mrs Currie a handsome five-figure sum looks set to top the best-seller list for political works.