What did Rochdale ever do to deserve Simon Danczuk’s tawdry saga?

The proud inhabitants of Rochdale, the Lancashire market town which was the historic home of such diverse musical talents as Gracie Fields and Lisa Stansfield, and also the birthplace of the Co-operative movement, must despair at how their hometown has been turned into a theatre of the grotesque.

Take yesterday, for example. Their local MP, Simon Danczuk (currently suspended from the Labour Party for a series of sexual indiscretions and now the subject of a historic rape allegation, which he strongly denies) was touring the streets of Rochdale meeting constituents. He was met by a group of protesters, who included Michael Burke, the brother of Mr Danczuk’s second wife, and former local councillor, Farooq Ahmed. Both were calling for the resignation of Mr Danczuk, who was branded a ‘scumbag’ and a ‘paedophile’ as he walked down the street.

But what of these agitators? Well, the 37-year-old Mr Burke was charged last year with a series of sex offences alleged to have taken place in the early 1990s (he denies the charges) while Mr Ahmed resigned from the local Labour Party when he was found guilty of a public order offence after it was alleged that he had directed a homophobic insult at a council colleague.

And over all this hovers the gargantuan, grisly ghost of the most grotesque figure of all, Cyril Smith, Rochdale’s MP for two decades, whose systematic sexual abuse of young boys was nobly, and courageously, exposed by the dogged investigation of Mr Danczuk, who, in another life, might have been lauded as an admirable exponent of the journalistic trade.

Then there’s Mr Danczuk’s two wives. Number one, Sonia Rossington, sold her story to a tabloid paper at the weekend, accusing her ex-husband of being a drunken sex pest, while her successor as the MP’s wife, Karen, is a shameless self-publicist whose specialism is posting pictures of her cleavage on social media. She has weighed in recently by calling Ms Rossington ‘a money-grabbing leech’.

And we haven’t finished yet. Step forward Sophena Houlihan, an 18-year-old resident of Rochdale, who told The Sun that, after she applied for a job with Mr Danczuk, they exchanged a number of sexually explicit texts. Further to illustrate that no one in this tawdry tale emerges with an unsullied reputation, reports have has now alleged that Ms Houlihan is an internet dominatrix who sells her used underwear online for £15.

Meanwhile, Mr Danczuk has apologised for his actions, and then went on Newsnight to explain that, in the same way as some men may prefer blondes or brunettes, he likes young women. For a man who did so much to expose Cyril Smith’s predatory behaviour, this was an unfortunate admission, to say the least. Where will it all end? Nowhere good, that’s for sure.

Readers of this newspaper can consider themselves grateful that they haven’t had to follow every twist and turn of this grubby saga (you’ve got me for that). But spare a thought for the good residents of Rochdale, who have to live with the acrid stench of this scandal festered by the prurience of social media, and a town which will no longer be famous for the Biggest Aspidistra in the World.