The scene of the greatest political sex-scandal of the 20th century has been twice exorcised to cleanse it of stigma, it has been revealed.

Cliveden was once the fashionable country house of Lady Astor who hosted political salons and long weekends for the rich and notorious. Now a hotel, it was brought back into the news last week by the death of John Profumo, once Minister of war in the Macmillan Government.

Profumo, disgraced himself by having an affair with a call girl, Christine Keeler, at Cliveden, and brought down the Government.

The house was exorcised by Dom Robert Pettipierre, a Benedictine monk who specialized in the rites. After one of the rituals he commented: “There were a lot of accumulations from the past, much of them quite sticky.”

The monk, who used the traditional holy water and salt in the rituals, penned an account of one of them in a book: Exorcising Devils.

He wrote: “I had to exorcise a house in Buckinghamshire. The owner had died and his widow asked me to ‘clean up’ the house before she vacated it. I blessed the interior.”

Singer Michael Jackson is now reported to want to buy the property. How long before it needs to be exorcised again?