Britain?s most notorious arranger of sex parties for the well-heeled and well-connected is to sell her saucy memorabilia to help out a local cats? refuge, the auctioneers announced on Wednesday. Cynthia Payne, who spent six months in jail for running the country?s most notorious bordello in the 1970s and 80s, is selling a range of racy items via Rosebery?s auction house in London.

Among the lots is a French maid?s outfit, reputedly worn by a middle-aged male client, photographs, newspaper clippings and a mink fur coat, as well as an old-fashioned projector used to show sex films. Also for sale are ?luncheon vouchers?, the currency she used as payment for the sex parties she arranged, famously based on the prosaic food tokens given out by British companies to pay for staff meals.

The items, to be sold as one lot, will benefit Streatham Cat Rescue in south London, near the house where Payne held her infamous parties, and still lives. Payne, dubbed Madam Sin by a tabloid press which enthusiastically covered her court case claims that MPs, barristers, journalists and police officers were regular guests at her orgies.

?You had to be at least 45 to come to one of my parties. It was like a vicar?s tea party with sex thrown in,? she once said. In 1980 she was sentenced to 18 months in jail, and ?retired? in 1986 after another prosecution attempt failed. Payne?s very British world of cheeky sexuality was immortalised by a 1987 film starring Julie Walters, titled ?Personal Services?.