After denying a News of the World story about the affair, Simon Hoggart, sketchwriter at The Guardian and a wine correspondent at Mrs Quinn’s magazine The Spectator, admitted it yesterday afternoon.

Mr Blunkett’s liaison with Mrs Quinn ended his career as Home Secretary last week after he was forced to admit that his office had intervened in a visa application for Mrs Quinn’s nanny.

The claims were put into the public domain by friends of Mrs Quinn as she tried to fight off an attempt by Mr Blunkett to win access to her son William, whom Mr Blunkett believes to be his child.

With the admission by Mr Hoggart yesterday — which appeared to suggest that his relationship with Mrs Quinn continued while she was seeing the former Home Secretary — the events surrounding Mr Blunkett’s resignation, which once had all the hallmarks of a Shakespearean tragedy, had descended into soap opera. But Mrs Quinn’s femme fatale reputation grows stronger by the day.

Yesterday the Sunday newspapers were again the battleground for an even more vicious war of words between the friends of Mr Blunkett and Mrs Quinn.

Even Sir Alan Budd, the former Whitehall mandarin who will report on Mr Blunkett’s role in the visa affair tomorrow, found himself facing the accusation that he had been “mesmerised” by Mrs Quinn when he visited her in hospital during his investigation. And in a bulletin on Mr Blunkett, a Cabinet friend said that he was heartbroken and very unwell.

As the web of relationships became ever more tangled, Mr Hoggart denied that he was the father of the child that Mrs Quinn is carrying, which Mr Blunkett had also believed to be his.

On Saturday night and yesterday morning Mr Hoggart, 57, repeatedly denied the report that they would meet for lunch before heading to “a secret love nest” for sex.

Speaking from his home in St Margaret’s, southwest London, yesterday morning, he said: “It’s a vile article, but it’s clearly aimed at harming Kimberly Quinn, and I notice the name of David Blunkett is very prominent in it, but I do not draw any conclusions, but that is what I notice. Of course I am consulting my lawyers.” He added: “It is just not true. I have said what I am going to say.”

Less than 24 hours later he changed his tune, saying in a statement: “I would like to clarify reports yesterday relating to my friendship with Kimberly Quinn. Contrary to the impression I gave last night, we did have a sexual relationship, which started before her marriage, but the relationship became very infrequent indeed afterwards.

“There is no possibility that I could be the father of either of her children. I deeply regret the hurt I have caused to my wife and family. I shall have nothing more to say on the subject.”

But if he had nothing else to say it appeared just about everyone else did. Depending on their Sunday newspaper, readers were given lurid accounts from each camp on the state of mind of the lovers-turned- adversaries. Mrs Quinn was reported as denying being after revenge. “All I wanted him (Mr Blunkett) to do was to leave me alone,” she “told friends”. She was “shocked” by the resignation. “I never thought it would lead to this,” she added.

From the Blunkett corner came the language of class warfare. “It’s very much the American millionairess who’s managed to knock out the working-class lad who’s the voice of ordinary people,” another “friend” opined. Another suggested: “It would appear that Alan Budd appears to have been as mesmerised by Kimberly as he (Mr Blunkett) was.”

The former Home Secretary swiftly distanced himself from that suggestion. A Labour spokesman said on his behalf: “David Blunkett has the highest regard for Sir Alan Budd and the work he has done on his report, which David believes has done what it was set up to do. Sir Alan Budd is a completely independent and totally reliable operator with whom everyone should have total confidence.”

Yesterday Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, said of Mr Blunkett: “He’s got this terrible chest infection so he’s feeling absolutely lousy. He has been through the most dreadful time. I think he’s heartbroken by the end of the relationship.”

Mr Blunkett plans, despite exhaustion, to be in the Commons today for the Prime Minister’s statement on the EU summit and the speech of his successor, Charles Clarke, on ID cards.

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