I'M NO MAJORETTE

SHE may have been linked to a number of high- profile Westminster names, but yesterday actress Aimi MacDonald was insistent John Major was not one of them.

Denying they were once lovers, the blonde TV star from the 70s said: "This is a pack of lies. It is absolute rubbish. I have never met him," she insisted last night. "I really cannot understand where all this is coming from."

Gossip had swept Tory circles about a blonde woman seen visiting Mr Major's flat in Kennington, South London, before he became Prime Minister in 1990. The woman was said to have had her own set of keys and even used to do ironing for Mr Major - last night due to give a speech to business leaders in California.

Speculation that Miss MacDonald was the woman involved was fuelled by a London dinner party at which she reputedly spoke of her friendship with Mr Major.

Miss MacDonald, who was also linked to senior Labour politicians John Stonehouse and Tom Pendry, was alleged to have said that Mr Major invested money in the lingerie shop she owned.

But last night she dismissed as "a load of rubbish" the rumours which emerged after revelations about Mr Major's 1980s affair with fellow Tory Minister Edwina Currie.

In 1976 squeaky-voiced Miss MacDonald, who appeared on TV comedy quiz Blankety Blank, was named as a lover of disgraced Cabinet Minister Stonehouse, who faked his own death and went on the run in Australia. She denied a romance with him when Stonehouse's bitter mistress Sheila Buckley claimed she was one of the "other women" he cheated on his wife with.

However, Miss MacDonald did say of Stonehouse, who died 14 years ago: "He was tall, dark and handsome and obviously very attractive to women."

Later she formed a close bond with former Labour Junior Minister Tom Pendry and the couple were seen at a string of London nightspots. When Mr Pendry split from wife Moira in 1984, he said Miss MacDonald had become his "very close and dear friend".

The former dancer, who lives in Wandsworth, South-West London, also dated three-times married stockbroker peer Lord Annaly in 1978.

Miss MacDonald, the youngest of three sisters from Glasgow, first found fame on cult 60s TV programme Not The 1948 show starring John Cleese and Tim Brooke-Taylor, revelling in the tag of "original dizzy blonde". She starred in hit musical Lady Be Good in 1968, the highlight of a long stage career, and was a fixture on the London socialite scene in the 70s and 80s.

She was also a regular panellist on Radio 4's long-running Just A Minute show.

Describing her success, she once said: "I'm not naturally witty, but I do chatter on and on."

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