If he doesn’t tackle the issue of the euro he will be harshly judged by history and I think he knows that.”Since heart trouble put paid to his own leadership hopes, Mr Heseltine has taken a back seat, but he remains a bogeyman for the old Thatcherites. Outside Mr Heseltine’s London townhouse, Lord Tebbit passed by, walking two dogs “Don’t go in there,” he called out “He can be dangerous!”. It is one of the most iconic images ever captured by a photographer. Christine Keeler, bare and barely out of her teens, astride a classic dining chair at the height of a sex scandal that kick-started the Sixties. Now, nearly 40 years after the Profumo affair, Keeler – or, rather, that single shot of her – is once more at the centre of a bitter controversy that could end up in the courts. It is one of the most iconic images ever captured by a photographer.

Christine Keeler, bare and barely out of her teens, astride a classic dining chair at the height of a sex scandal that kick-started the Sixties. Now, nearly 40 years after the Profumo affair, Keeler – or, rather, that single shot of her – is once more at the centre of a bitter controversy that could end up in the courts.
Only this time the row isn’t over what did or didn’t go on between sheets or pass between strangers; it’s about the precise positioning of Keeler’s legs, neck, arms, shoulders and head, the light and shadows around her and the chair she’s sitting on.In what could prove to be a first for the English legal system, photographer Lewis Morley, who took the original photograph in 1963 during a one-roll, 10-minute shoot, has accused the producers of a West End play of infringing his copyright by commissioning a series of images of actors in Keeler-like poses astride chairs as publicity material. Fittingly, the play is Entertaining Mr Sloane, Joe Orton’s farce written in the afterglow of the Profumo scandal.Agents acting on behalf of Mr Morley claim that unlike most of the other Keeler-on-chair-type shots taken in recent years, the images used by the play’s promoters – which include one featuring Alison Steadman – are simply too similar to his own original shot, and are consulting lawyers over a possible breach of copyright.If any court case did arise, it holds out the delicious prospect of barristers debating in detail the finer points of Keeler’s body, as they try to establish precisely what constitutes a copy of that famous image rather than a mere re-creation of it – in essence, how close the law will let you come to depicting the naked Christine Keeler if there’s a chair around.Mr Morley, who now lives in Australia, is also believed to have been further enraged by the fact that the play at the centre of the current row – being staged by Theatre Royal Bath Productions and theatre company Fiery Angel at the Arts Theatre in central London – was first promoted in 1965 using another Keeler-like shot of his, this time of its creator, Joe Orton, therefore strengthening his claim to rights over the images.Fiery Angel’s manager, Nick Gingell, disputes that the new shots infringe Mr Morley’s copyright. “We are not reproducing photographs of Christine Keeler or Joe Orton,” he says. “We are producing photographs of four actors, who happen to be naked, sitting on chairs. You cannot copyright the way someone sits on a chair.”Or can you? According to Mr Morley’s agent, Nicky Akehurst: “Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, protection is of course for those elements of the photograph which were Mr Morley’s original work”The key features as we see them are the way in which the nude subject is posed in relation to the chair and the camera, the lighting of the shot and the background.”We have never laid claim to any monopoly in images of nude subjects sitting on back to front chairs,” continues Ms Akehurst “However, we do draw the line …

when someone has crossed the line between imitating the idea of the photographs and reproducing substantial elements of their original expression and especially where the motive is purely for profit.”So the devil, and the writs, are in the detail – and the lawyers are sharpening their pencils. “There are endless cases where copyright has been infringed,” says Charles Swan, of media lawyers the Simkins Partnership, which is acting for Mr Morley and Ms Akehurst, “but what hasn’t been tested is a case where the infringing item is a re-creation of a photograph. What hasn’t been tested in court is a case where the intention is to imitate, not copy.”It’s a grey area, a matter of degree,” adds Mr Swan. “There is no copyright in an idea, but there are people who have imitated that photograph in their way, and if you mimic it you’re into the realms of copyright infringement… our case is that we say that is clear-cut.” But, he concedes, such judgments are bound to be “very subjective”.For nearly 30 years, copyright of the Keeler picture resided with the photo agency Camera Press, so depriving Mr Morley of all but £3,000 from the total revenue generated by use of the shot that is thought to run into many hundreds of thousands of pounds. In 1989, he won back the rights to the photo, and has himself re-shot the chair-straddle image with celebrities including Sir David Frost and comedian Barry Humphries. But some have climbed aboard the chair for other photographers, including Jodie Kidd, the Spice Girls and – in a questionable attempt to capture the sensuality of the original – Keith Chegwin.

In 1993, Keeler herself once more assumed the position, with Terry O’Neill behind the camera. No legal action followed.But in photography, as in any art, absolute originality can prove hard to establish – and one newly rediscovered image that pre-dates the famous 1963 shot by almost five years does bear a striking resemblance to that of Keeler. Darkroom sleuths from Amateur Photographer have turned up a shot of a woman straddling a back-to-front chair that appeared in the magazine in October 1958. That image, of a ballerina called Mimi, was taken by an Italian called Carlo Bevilacqua, and is reproduced this week in the new issue.When contacted by the magazine, Mr Morley said that he wasn’t surprised to see another variation of the shot, pointing out that, historically, the pose was not an unusual one as it enabled photographers to keep their sitters still. His agent, Ms Akehurst, added that Mr Morley had shot a self-portrait in the same position years before the Keeler shoot, but that his decision to use the chair with Keeler was not based on his being aware of prior shots.Like the Profumo scandal, and Ms Keeler herself, the fuss over one of the most famous images of the 20th century is unlikely to fade away. “It’s ridiculous,” the owner of the Arts Theatre, Edward Snape, said last week.