A FEW years back I was trying to bag an interview with Eliot Spitzer for The Sunday Times Magazine.

The idea was a double portrait of Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general and the scourge of Wall Street, and his mentor, Manhattan’s legendary district attorney Robert Morgenthau.

Morgenthau has a fearsome reputation but proved an easy get. I called his office, they asked him, he said yes and they found a spot in his diary.

Spitzer was hard. I badgered to no avail. Everyone wanted Spitzer, I could join the queue. Then everything changed.

Harry Benson, the photographer who has shot everything from pillow-fighting Beatles to all the presidents since Dwight Eisenhower, was signed up to do the portraits. I got a call from Spitzer’s PR. “Harry Benson’s doing the pictures? THE Harry Benson?” I was in.

Morgenthau is one of the most fascinating men I have ever met. The 88-year-old has been the DA since 1975, is obsessed by the idea of his public duty and was deeply disappointed that others did not want to shoulder that responsibility.

Spitzer has used many of Morgenthau’s tactics - the DA likes a showy press conference - but I came away with the sense that Spitzer was more of a politician. And vainer.

After beating up on Wall Street’s dotcom excesses, Spitzer used my magazine profile and Mr Benson’s pictures as a launch pad to higher office as New York’s governor.

Who knows, if I’d interviewed him again, he could probably have made it all the way to the White House. Now those dreams are over for both of us.

When I first heard the news that Spitzer was calling hookers I was shocked, for about an hour.

But the moral outrage continues on Wall Street where Spitzer’s downfall is seen as a case of richly deserved bad karma for ruining the lives of countless innocents. “We all have our own private hells. I hope his is hotter than anybody else’s,” said Kenneth Langone, former director of the New York Stock Exchange and ally of Richard Grasso, the former NYSE chief executive whom Spitzer had the gall to attack over his $190m (€122m) pay packet.

There are conspiracy theories galore about Spitzer’s fall. Some of them concerning Langone. Asked on CNBC if he had been surprised by the news, he said: “Not at all. I had no doubt about his lack of character and integrity.

“It would only be a matter of time. I didn’t think he would do it this soon or the way he did it. But I know for sure he went himself to a post office and bought $2,800 worth of mail orders to send to the hooker.”

Asked how he knew that, Langone said: “I know it. I know somebody who was standing in back of him in line . . . ”

Did Spitzer have a stalker? There will be more to come on this scandal and not just over the identities of the high-priced hookers’ other clients.

But just because Spitzer has been shown to be a hypocrite doesn’t mean he was wrong.

And when the schadenfreude eventually dies down, all this talk of banking innocents may seem especially galling to the thousands of Americans now suffering the consequences of this season’s banking disaster - Wall Street’s love of subprime mortgages.

Video: Eliot Spitzer's resignation

Times Recommends

• BA chief waives bonus after T5 fiasco
• Prospects of cheaper loans hit as Libor soars
• Rice price dives as US and Japan set to unlock grain pact