It is retold so often that the account of how an embarrassed government minister rescued a female relative, who had been caught in a police sex worker crackdown he sanctioned, has become something of an urban legend. Some say it is surprising that the woman’s embarrassment - not to mention that of the official - did not lead him to entertain the possibility that police may have acted too arbitrarily when they set out to banish the world’s oldest profession in the 1980s. Officers’ methods included accosting - and even arresting - any ‘suspicious’ woman walking around after dark, especially if she was daring to move about unaccompanied.