If anything was going to derail John McCain’s White House bid, it was the fear that he was too old to be president, not the likelihood of being embroiled in a sex and favours scandal. But when the Arizona senator reached for the lawyer who steered Bill Clinton through his women troubles, it was a sign that he was seriously rattled.

At the moment that the race was shaping up to be an epic contest between Barack Obama and McCain – the future versus the past, as Obama would have it, or naivety versus experience, as McCain prefers to frame it – the scandal hit the newsstands. After an early, highly successful counterattack, McCain was accused this weekend of being economical with the truth as far as some aspects of the story were concerned.

The essence of the tale is fairly simple. Vicki Iseman, 40, a blonde telecommunications lobbyist, became friends with McCain, 71, eight years ago. Some advisers thought the relationship might be romantic.

There is no evidence of an affair but they were certainly cosy. Iseman accompanied him to fundraisers, travelled with him on a client’s jet and appeared to trade on her relationship with him to such an extent that McCain’s senior advisers warned her to back off.

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Adding spice to the story, Iseman appears to resemble McCain’s wife, Cindy, another pencil-thin blonde, who stood by her husband last week as he repeatedly denied both the sexual innuendo and specific allegations of favours in the story.

John Weaver, who was once one of McCain’s closest aides but quit his campaign last summer, said he remembered meeting Iseman at Washington’s railway station and asked her to keep her distance from McCain, a member of the Senate commerce committee. He was concerned that Iseman’s boasts would damage McCain’s reputation because he had taken such a prominent stand against special interests and lobbying.

Two anonymous former associates of McCain said they confronted the senator several times about the risk to his career of showing favouritism towards Iseman. McCain wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that were helpful to her clients, although there were other times, staff say, when he took a stand against their interests.

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