Sex scandals, some historical but many contemporary, involving political figures, celebrities, movie stars, sports stars, musicians and artists, from Julius Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra, which scandalized Rome and may have contributed to his murder, to what exactly IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn did or didn’t get up to in that New York hotel room. England’s Edward II was put to death by having a red-hot poker shoved up ‘those parts in which he had been wont to make his vicious pleasures’ and James Dean was known as ‘the human ashtray’ for the pleasure he took in having cigarettes stubbed out on his body, but from Silvio Berlusconi to Tiger Woods, many have been more focused on pleasure than pain. Even Barack Obama gets a look in – did he have an affair with Vera Baker?