Cynthia Payne Cynthia Payne Cynthia Payne (24 December 193215 November 2015) was an English brothel keeper and party hostess who made headlines in the 1970s and 1980s, when she was acquitted of running a brothel at 32 Ambleside Avenue, in Streatham, a southwestern suburb of London. Payne first came to national attention in 1978 when police raided her home and found a sex party was in progress. Men paid with luncheon vouchers to dress up in lingerie and be spanked by young women. Police found 53 men at her residence, in varying levels of undress, which included "a peer of the realm,
The Beatles in India felt that the Maharishi had, in her words, "too much interest in public recognition, celebrities and money" for a spiritual man. Cynthia Lennon, Cooke de Herrera, and author and Beatles associate Barry Miles have blamed Mardas for turning Lennon against the Maharishi. Miles writes that Mardas feared for his status as Lennon's personal guru, and set about sabotaging the relationship between the Beatles and the Maharishi. In a statement published in "The New York Times" in 2010, Mardas denied that this was the case. Before leaving London in February, the Beatles had considered making a documentary film about the Maharishi