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Archer wins record £500,000 damages


Andrew Rawnsley
Saturday July 25, 1987
Guardian Unlimited

Mr Jeffrey Archer was yesterday awarded record libel damages of £500,000 and more still in costs from the Star newspaper for accusing him of paying a prostitute for sex.
With costs of the three-week High Court trial estimated at £700,000, the Star 's front-page story published last November will cost its owners, Express Newspapers more than £1 million.

The former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party had told the jury he was a fool for paying £ 2,000 to the prostitute, Monica Coghlan, but not a liar when he denied ever sleeping with her.

After shaking each of the jurors by the hand, Mr Archer left the court saying the 'verdict speaks for itself. ' He was silent on his future political ambitions, nor would he comment on how he intends to spend the £500,000 which is tax-free.

Mr Archer is understood to have an arrangement with a Sunday newspaper for his account of the three-week trial.

The News of the World said it would still be defending Mr Archer 's further action against it for its story which first linked him with Miss Coghlan and which led to his resignation.
The paper's lawyers are, however, thought to be pressing for an out-of-court settlement following an admission to the Star libel jury by the paper's former editor, Mr David Montgomery, that his story had also implied that Mr Archer and Miss Coghlan had sex.
Mrs Mary Archer , who sat alongside her husband throughout the trial, said she was 'grateful and delighted. '

The Star 's editor, Mr Lloyd Turner labelled in court 'the silent editor' for his decision not to appear in the witness box in defence of his article - would only say that Express Newspapers would be appealing.

The judge, Mr Justice Caulfield had earlier been forced to recall the jury after admitting to 12 'inaccuracies and mistakes' in his summing-up following submissions by the Star 's counsel, Mr Michael Hill QC.

The jury of eight men and four women, returned to the jurors' room after a recall regarded as extraordinary by lawyers, took just over four hours to find in Mr Archer 's favour.

His counsel, Mr Robert Alexander QC had demanded 'enormous damages' for the Star story, which he described as 'the gravest, most ruthless libel of modern times' for branding Mr Archer not only as a user of a prostitute specialising in 'kinky sex,' but a liar for denying it afterwards.

Though the £500,000 does not quite match the cost of 'all the tea in China' suggested by Mr Alexander, it is a record for British libel damages. The previous record was set six weeks ago, when damages of £450,000 were awarded to a former Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Martin Packard, against a Greek newspaper.

The costs of the three-week trial, estimated at up to £700,000, are also thought to be a record for the length of hearing. The most expensive action was the £1.2 million in costs paid by the BBC after an action brought by a Harley Street slimming specialist, Dr Sidney Gee, in 1985. That hearing lasted six months.
Mr Justice Caulfield called for 'dignity' in the courtroom as gasps and muted cheers greeted the jury's verdict. He told them they had carried an 'enormous burden' over the last three weeks and would be excused from jury service for 15 years.

He refused an application by Mr Hill for a stay on payment pending appeal. The Star was also injuncted not to repeat the libel.

After the millionaire novelist lingered for a few minutes to sign autographs, the Archers forced their way out of the melee of reporters and members of public in court for the most publicised libel action since Liberace sued the Daily Mirror in 1959.

Mrs Archer said they would be going home for a weekend to Granchester, near Cambridge, to rest and celebrate. 'We might,' she said, 'open a bottle of champagne. '

In its front-page story published last November, the Star had alleged that Mr Archer paid Miss Coghlan £50 for sex and £20 for 'extra time' during a 15-minute session in a Mayfair hotel.

It appeared five days after the first story that Mr Archer had paid Miss Coghlan £2,000 for a trip abroad had appeared in the News of the World under the headline 'Tory boss Archer pays off vice girl,' and after categoric denials from Mr Archer that he had either met or slept with Miss Coghlan.

In court, he told the jury that he was an 'honourable fool' who had been duped by Miss Coghlan into paying the money out of compassion and the victim of an elaborate set-up by the News of the World.

She had led him to believe that by sending her abroad he would be able to 'nail the lie' that they had ever had sex together.

Five days after his resignation, the Star had compounded the libel under the headline 'Poor Jeffrey: vice-girl Monica speaks: Archer the man I knew. ' It was designed, his counsel had told the jury, as 'the killer blow' to wipe out any further chances Mr Archer might have had of political office. He had demanded damages which would 'stamp on it' and 'strike a blow for a cleaner press. '

By their verdict, counsel had told the jury, they could determine Mr Archer 's political future.

Despite yesterday's verdict, the prospects of any return to an official post in the Conservative Party are thought to be very remote.

But the publicity of the trial is likely to have guaranteed bigger audiences yet both for Mr Archer 's cheerleading tour of the constituencies and for his books.

Archer faces new allegations


Ex-friend says peer misled court about his marriage
The fall of Archer: special report

Will Woodward
Monday November 29, 1999
The Guardian

Scotland Yard's inquiry into possible perjury charges against Jeffrey Archer took a surprise turn yesterday when a former confidant of the disgraced peer said he was prepared to return to Britain to give evidence against him.

Michael Stacpoole, who handed the prostitute Monica Coghlan £2,000 at Victoria station on Lord Archer's behalf in 1986, accused his one-time friend of misleading the high court about the state of his marriage.

Lord Archer is alleged to have paid Mr Stacpoole £40,000 to go abroad to prevent him giving evidence in Lord Archer's 1987 libel trial against the Daily Star. "In effect he was paying me to keep my mouth shut - perverting the course of justice is what it is," he told the Mail on Sunday, which bought his story.

Mr Stacpoole, now 61 and living in a "Thailand hideaway", told the paper: "If I'd have been asked under oath if Archer was a faithful husband, I would have had to confirm he was not because of his affairs with other women."
The happy state of Lord Archer's marriage was alluded to frequently during the Star libel trial by his counsel, Lord Alexander, and then famously by the judge, Justice Caulfield, during his summing-up.

However, Mr Stacpoole claimed yesterday that Lord Archer had a five-year affair with his former assistant Andrina Colquhoun and once took a drinking-bar hostess back to his Thames-side apartment.

A promise by Mr Stacpoole to return to London to help Scotland Yard with its inquiries was merely the most depressing news for Lord Archer during a second weekend of revelations about his personal life. The new spate of stories added further fuel to the police inquiries, and to the case being prepared by the Star to have the 1987 libel verdict overturned.

Nine days ago Lord Archer resigned as Tory candidate for mayor of London after the TV producer Ted Francis revealed he had agreed to lie on Lord Archer's behalf by claiming to have dinner with him on September 9 1986 - the date on which he was initially accused of having sex with Ms Coghlan.

The peer remained inside his home at Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, with his wife Mary and son James yesterday, and refused to comment on the latest allegations - for legal reasons, according to his spokesman, Nadhim Zahawi, who appealed for a line to be drawn under the affair and rubbished yesterday's newspaper stories.

"These allegations today are unsubstantiated and editors are really plumbing the depths of desperation. It is friends of friends who are being quoted. People of dubious character from 13 years ago."

Mr Stacpoole, Lord Archer's former fixer and PR adviser, said he had been summoned to a crisis meeting at Conservative central office by Lord Archer's secretary, Angie Peppiatt, in 1986. Lord Archer was then deputy chairman of the party.

He was greeted with the words: "Good morning Michael - Jeffrey's been caught going with a prostitute." Mr Stacpoole at first assumed wrongly that the "prostitute" was a hostess from a bar in Gower Street, central London, whom he said Lord Archer had taken back to Alembic House, his flat overlooking parliament, three weeks earlier.

Lord Archer later took Mr Stacpoole up on his offer of help by asking him to take an envelope stuffed with cash to platform 3 at Victoria station and "give it to a lady who is wearing a green suit".

Mr Stacpoole told the Mail on Sunday he had been paid £200 or £250 for acting as the go-between.

Two days later, Lord Archer resigned as Tory deputy chairman, having been exposed trying to pay Ms Coghlan money to go abroad. Mr Stacpoole says Lord Archer then used the same ruse on him.

"Jeffrey said he would cover all my expenses of going abroad. So an assistant got £2,000 out of the safe and I went to work in Paris." In all, he received about £40,000.

Sex, lies and confusion for the drama's players

Monica Coghlan
Former prostitute, still living in Rochdale. Was handed an envelope containing at least £2,000 by a friend of Archer's to persuade her to leave the country. Claimed to have had sex with Jeffrey Archer - but was not believed by the libel jury in Archer v the Daily Star, 1987. Keeping mum for now.

Michael Stacpoole
Friend of Archer's who handed £2,000 to Coghlan at Victoria station. Went to Paris, chose not to return to help the Daily Star in their libel case but, from Thailand, has broken silence to attack Archer in the Mail on Sunday.

Terence Baker
Archer's theatrical agent. Told the high court he met Archer in Le Caprice on September 8 1986 and was driven home by him at the time Archer was accused of meeting Coghlan. An unnamed friend claimed in the Sunday Express that Baker admitted lying in the witness box for Archer. Adam Raphael, an Economist journalist, said Archer's diary indicates he met Baker the night afterwards. Baker died in 1991.

Ted Francis
Revealed Archer had asked him to act as a false alibi for September 9 1986. In 1987, the Daily Star initially alleged Archer had sex with Coghlan on that day - it later said it was the day before. Sold his story to the News of the World for £14,000 and forced Archer's resignation as Tory candidate for London mayor.

Andrina Colquhoun
Archer's one-time assistant. Archer's camp last week acknowledged that the two had an affair, as protection from the legally hazardous charge of asking Francis to lie. She has had nothing to say to the papers so far.

Richard Cohen
Literary agent/publisher. Dined with Archer at Le Caprice on September 8 but left at about 10.30pm, before the hours disputed by the Star. Now in New York and does not want to speak.

Henry Tonga
Said he chatted with Archer in Le Caprice at about 11.30pm on September 8. Described Archer at weekend as "an honourable and decent man".

Pressure intensifies on Archer

Kevin Maguire and Colin Blackstock
Tuesday November 30, 1999
The Guardian

Jeffrey Archer's credibility was under renewed pressure last night as the former prostitute Monica Coghlan challenged him to face her in court for a second time to tell the truth over their meeting 13 years ago.

Ms Coghlan maintains that she had a brief sexual encounter with Lord Archer, de spite his denials, and wants to see the facts in the Tory peer's 1987 libel case - in which he was awarded £500,000 damages against the Daily Star - re-examined in court.

She broke her silence for the first time since the court case to talk to the Mirror newspaper, after Lord Archer's admission last week that he had asked a friend to provide him with a false alibi.

She said: "I told the truth. He ruined my life, and it is time he admitted just what he has done. I know that going back to court will be hell because I lived through it once before. But if that is what it takes then I am prepared to do it."

Lord Archer's expulsion from the Conservative party moved a step nearer last night when the leader and chairman accused him of bringing the party into disrepute. William Hague and Michael Ancram sent separate submissions to its ethics and integrity committee to reinforce the leadership's case.

The Archers left their home together last night for the first time in 10 days. Mary Archer drove to the front door so that her husband could sprint into the passenger seat to avoid photographers.

Detectives plan to interview Lord Archer's former associate Michael Stacpoole, who claims he was paid £40,000 to stay out of the country as the novelist sued the Daily Star in 1987.

Mr Stacpoole, now living in Thailand, was sent by Lord Archer to hand over £2,000 to Ms Coghlan at Victoria station, London, so she could leave the country, even though he maintained he had never met her.

In a statement through his solicitors, Lord Archer said yesterday: "I am following the advice I have received, which is to reserve my responses and supporting evidence for the police inquiry, which I understand has been requested by the Star newspaper and with which I intend to fully cooperate."

Archer denies asking libel witness to lie


Statement 'utterly refutes' false alibi claim

Nicholas Watt, Political Correspondent
Friday December 10, 1999
The Guardian

Jeffrey Archer last night emphatically denied asking a key witness in his £500,000 libel case against the Daily Star to lie in court to help him win.

The millionaire novelist released a statement 36 hours after the Guardian claimed that Lord Archer had asked a theatrical agent to provide a false alibi in the 1987 case.

"I utterly refute the suggestion that the late Mr Terence Baker committed or was asked to commit perjury on my behalf," Lord Archer said in the statement issued through his lawyers," and that I paid Mr Michael Stacpoole to prevent him from giving evidence.

"I reiterate that I did not have sexual relations with Monica Coghlan or with any other prostitute.

"Further, a number of wild allegations have been made about my share dealings and my bank accounts. These allegations are baseless and will if necessary also be dealt with by me in the appropriate forum."

Wednesday's Guardian reported a claim by a senior television executive, Nick Elliott, that Mr Baker had told him he lied under oath to protect Lord Archer.

In a statement to the Daily Star's solicitors, Mr Elliott said that Baker had fabricated a story that he received a lift home from Lord Archer on the night the author was accused of sleeping with the prositute Monica Coghlan.

During the high court hearing in 1987 Mr Baker claimed that Lord Archer dropped him off in Camberwell after they bumped into each other in Le Caprice restaurant.

His evidence helped to convince the jury that Lord Archer could not have, as the Daily Star reported, picked up and paid Ms Coghlan £70 for sex in a Victoria hotel, a mile from the restaurant.

Lord Archer admitted last month that he had asked another friend to lie on his behalf in his libel case.

The Tories' ethics and integrity committee is to investigate the false statement by the television producer, Ted Francis, which was never produced in court.

Lord Archer suffered a setback last night when the integrity commitee announced that it had "regrettably" postponed a meeting with him after he turned down the chance of early talks.

Elizabeth Appleby QC, the leading barrister who chairs the committee, said that the delay had been caused by Lord Archer's insistence that he be accompanied by a lawyer of his choice. He is to be represented by a prominent South African barrister, Sir Sydney Kentridge QC.

Ms Appleby said that she had agreed to Lord Archer's demand "because of the gravity of the complaint against Lord Archer and the seriousness of the consequences to him should that complaint be made good".

William Hague referred Lord Archer to the committee last month within days of his admission that he had asked Mr Francis to provide him with a false alibi.

In an attempt to demonstrate his determination to stamp out sleaze, Mr Hague's aides made clear that Ms Appleby's investigation would lead to Lord Archer's expulsion from the party.

Aides also made clear that Mr Hague and the Tory chairman, Michael Ancram, had submitted damning indictments of Lord Archer to the committee.

Ms Appleby underlined her anger with such briefings yesterday when she denied that her committee had already made up its mind.

"Further, a number of wild allegations have been made about my share dealings and my bank accounts. These allegations are baseless and will if necessary also be dealt with by me in the appropriate forum."

Police question Archer bagman over libel case 'payoff'

Kevin Maguire
Saturday December 18, 1999
The Guardian

A key figure in the Jeffrey Archer libel scandal was interviewed in Thailand yesterday by two Scotland Yard detectives.

The author's former bagman, Michael Stacpoole, was questioned by police investigating claims that the writer lied under oath to win £500,000 damages. Officers visited Mr Stacpoole, 61, in Bangkok's red light Pattaya district after he claimed to have been paid £40,000 to flee Britain during the 1987 trial.

Lord Archer sent Mr Stacpoole to Victoria station, London, to pay Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 despite maintaining he never slept with her.

Yet Mr Stacpoole, who claims he was cheated out of half the damages, never appeared during the court case and has since bragged: "My evidence under cross-examination would have blown his case apart and he knew it."

He has also accused his former friend of a five-year affair with a personal assistant, Andrina Colquhoun, when the Archer defence team boasted of a happy marriage during the trial.

Mr Stacpoole, who became boss of a Belgian nightclub before moving to Thailand, vowed to return to Britain to appear in any new trial as the Daily Star newspaper tries to get back its £500,000.

Lord Archer has denied Mr Stacpoole's claims through his lawyers, but was forced to quit as the Tory London mayor candidate after admitting concocting a false alibi with another friend, Ted Francis.

TV executive Nick Elliott has also revealed that a key witness, Terence Baker, who handled film rights to Lord Archer's books, told him he lied in court to cover for the writer.

Since Lord Archer quit last month he has spent most of his time avoiding the press by staying in his Grantchester home near Cambridge.

He is shown in a Channel 4 documentary tomorrow night trying to halt filming whenever he was asked tricky questions about his past.

He put his hand up to the camera lens several times while the programme was made, before his downfall.

At one point, asked about paying Ms Coghlan, he explodes: "No, I won't discuss it. It's not worth it... my lawyers would put a writ on you just like that."

The author last week raised £600,000 by selling 100 Andy Warhol prints at Christie's in Los Angeles.

Archer saga key man injured in crash

Vikram Dodd
Friday August 18, 2000
The Guardian

A former friend of Lord Archer, who pledged to testify against the peer if he was charged with perjury, yesterday suffered head injuries in a motorcycle accident.

Michael Stacpoole was expected to be a key witness if the former Tory vice-chairman is prosecuted for attempting to influence witnesses in a libel trial he brought in 1987 over allegations he slept with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan.

Mr Stacpoole, 62, was injured when a motorcycle he was riding collided with another bike in the resort of Pattaya, Thailand, 95 miles from Bangkok. He was taken to hospital, where he was last night in an intensive care unit.

A confidant of Lord Archer, Mr Stacpoole went to London Victoria railway station to hand Ms Coghlan a package containing £2,000 on behalf of the millionaire novelist.

The crown prosecution service is examining evidence it received last week from a police investigation into the peer. In December Scotland Yard detectives interviewed Mr Stacpoole in Pattaya where he now lives. He claimed to have been paid £40,000 to leave Britain during Lord Archer's libel action against the Daily Star. Lord Archer won £500,000 damages from the newspaper over a story about an alleged relationship with Ms Coghlan. He has denied paying his former friend to leave the country.

A nurse at the Bangkok Pattaya hospital, where Mr Stacpoole is being treated, said he had head injuries and a fractured shoulder and was in a serious condition, but that his life was not in danger. In May Mr Stacpoole was left partially paralysed after suffering a stroke.

In November Lord Archer resigned in disgrace as the Tory candidate in the London mayoral elections and was subsequently expelled from the Conservative party for five years.

Although the CPS has declined to discuss possible charges, it is thought to be considering alleged offences of attempting or conspiring to pervert the course of justice, or of perjury.

The police investigation was sparked by Lord Archer's admission in November that he had asked his then friend Ted Francis to lie for him at the libel trial, giving him a false alibi. In the event, this was never used in court.
The newspaper is now seeking the return of the damages, its costs and interest, estimated to total around £3m.

The police investigation was sparked by Lord Archer's admission in November that he had asked his then friend Ted Francis to lie for him at the libel trial, giving him a false alibi

Suspected armed robber hits car during getaway


Archer case witness, Monica Coghlan, killed

Paul Kelso
Saturday April 28, 2001
The Guardian

Monica Coghlan, the former prostitute at the centre of the Jeffrey Archer libel case in 1987, has been killed after a car allegedly hijacked by a suspected armed robber collided with her Ford Fiesta in Scammonden, near Huddersfield, west Yorkshire.

Ms Coghlan, 50, died in the early hours of yesterday morning at Leeds general infirmary after being cut from the wreckage of her car and taken to hospital by air ambulance.
The driver of the Jaguar, a 32-year-old man, was seriously injured and was last night under police guard in Huddersfield royal infirmary.

Ms Coghlan, who leaves a teenage son, Robin, was killed after a chain of events that began when a man apparently armed with a handgun raided a chemist in Birkby, near Huddersfield.

After stealing valium, temazepam and DF118, a compound used by drug addicts, the man demanded another customer's car keys before driving off in a white Peugeot.

Shortly afterwards, the Peugeot collided with a Land Rover on New Hey Road, and the man stopped a passing white Jaguar. The Jaguar then crashed into Ms Coghlan's blue Fiesta, which was thrown through a wall into a field.

Ms Coghlan became synonymous with Lord Archer in 1986 when allegations that she had slept with the then Tory vice-chairman were published in the Daily Star.

The allegations, which Lord Archer denied, followed a sting operation by the News of the World in which Ms Coghlan was photographed accepting money from Michael Stacpoole, a friend of Lord Archer's, on platform three at Victoria station.

Lord Archer acknowledged offering Ms Coghlan £2,000 to leave the country to escape hounding by reporters, describing it as 'an error of judgment', but he vigorously denied having slept with her. In 1987, after a sensational libel trial, he was awarded a record £500,000 in damages.

Ms Coghlan's death comes two weeks before Lord Archer and his former friend Ted Francis are due to stand trial at the Old Bailey on charges of perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to the 1987 trial.

It is alleged that Lord Archer asked Francis to provide a false alibi for him in advance of the libel trial, and falsified diary entries. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

Last night the crown prosecution service said the trial would go ahead. Ms Coghlan, who lived in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where she worked as a bingo caller, had not been due to give evidence.

Ms Coghlan's nephew Kevin, 20, said: 'We just can't believe what has happened. Everyone is really upset. I don't know how my cousin is coping with it because I have not seen him.'

Driver admits manslaughter of Coghlan

Paul Kelso
Thursday July 5, 2001
The Guardian

An armed robber pleaded guilty yesterday to the manslaughter of Monica Coghlan, the former prostitute at the heart of Lord Archer's 1987 libel action against the Daily Star.

Gary Day, 34, was driving a stolen Jaguar getaway car when he smashed into Ms Coghlan's blue Ford Fiesta in Scammonden, West Yorkshire, in April.

Ms Coghlan was airlifted to Leeds general infirmary where she died from her injuries.
The crash came after Day held up a chemist using an imitation firearm. He rushed from the shop and stole a taxi, but crashed into a Land Rover. He then threatened the driver of the Jaguar and drove away. Within 500 yards he had hit Ms Coghlan.

Day, from Huddersfield, also pleaded guilty to robbery and possessing a firearm when he appeared at Bradford crown court. He is due to be sentenced tomorrow.

Ms Coghlan became synonymous with Lord Archer when the Daily Star alleged that he had paid her £70 for sex in 1986.

The allegations, which Lord Archer denied, followed a sting by the News of the World when Ms Coghlan was pictured accepting cash from Michael Stacpoole, Lord Archer's friend, at Victoria station.

Lord Archer acknowledged offering Ms Coghlan £2,000 to leave the country to escape reporters, describing it as "an error of judgment", but he denied having slept with her. In 1987, after a sensational libel trial, he was awarded a record £500,000 in damages.
Lord Archer denies six counts, and Mr Francis denies a single count, of perverting the course of justice. Closing speeches in his trial are expected to begin today.

Ms Coghlan was born in 1951, one of seven children. She had a troubled childhood and left school at 15. After leaving home she was sexually assaulted. By age 17 she was working as a prostitute.

In 1985 she had a son, Robin, and moved into a bungalow in her home town of Rochdale. During the week she cared for her son alone following the death of her partner, and at weekends she travelled to London where she picked up clients in Shepherd Market, Mayfair, an area synonymous with prostitution.
It was here she said that Lord Archer first approached her.

Chronology: countdown to comeuppance


Special report: Jeffrey Archer

Friday July 20, 2001
The Guardian

1986
September 8-9 Archer alleged to have slept with Monica Coghlan

September 9 Archer dines with Terence Baker in evening

October 24 Michael Stacpoole offers Coghlan £2,000 to leave the country

October 26 News of the World publishes allegations about Coghlan. Archer resigns as Conservative deputy chairman

November 1 Star alleges Archer paid Coghlan for "perverted sex"

November 5 Archer issues libel writs against both papers

November 18 Baker tells Lord Mishcon, Archer's solicitor, that they had dined together on evening of September 8

December 23 Lovells, the Star's solicitors, lodge defence, mistakenly citing September 9-10 as time of alleged encounter with Coghlan


1987

Early January Archer asks Ted Francis to say they had dined together on night of September 9-10 1986.

January 8 Gavin Pearce, a friend of Peppiatt's, buys new 1986 Economist diary for Archer

January 22 Francis writes to Archer's solicitor saying they dined together on evening of September 9 1986

April 6 Mistake over date of allegation identified and it reverts to evening of September 8-9

April Archer asks Angela Peppiatt to fill in engagements for September 8-9 1986 in new A4 1986 diary from a list in his handwriting.

May 11 Mishcon sends photocopy of the bogus A4 diary for September 8-9 to Lovells

May 26 Archer asks Peppiatt to fill in week of September 5-12 in bogus A4 diary as per his Economist diary. Peppiatt photocopies blank pages against a copy of the Times, then fills in the pages and takes more copies. Peppiatt then delivers diary to Mishcon, where Lovells solicitor inspects it.

June 10 Lovells write to Mishcon demanding to see all diaries

June 15 Mishcon send photocopies of second diary, the Economist diary

June 23 Archer commits perjury, swearing an affidavit that the diaries, and the entries in them,were in existence on or before October 26 1986

June 25 Lovells inspect Economist diary. Only September 8 and part of 9 are visible

July 6 Libel trial opens at high court

July 8 Archer, asked "Were both of these diaries in existence on October 26 of 1986?", replies, "Yes sir."

July 24 Archer awarded £500,000 by jury after four hours deliberation

December Peppiatt resigns after Archer questions a £10,000 bonus


1999

October Ted Francis contacts Max Clifford with story of false alibi

November 4, 9, 12 News of the World records telephone conversations between Archer and Francis

November 20 Archer resigns from London mayoral race.

December Angela Peppiatt inteviewed by police.

2000

February 5 Archer expelled from Conservative Party

April 7 Archer arrested

September 26 Archer charged with perjury on opening night of his play, The Accused


2001

May 13 : Defence attempts to get charges thrown out

May 30 Trial opens at Old Bailey

July 19 Archer gets four years

November 4, 9, 12 News of the World records telephone conversations between Archer and Francis

April Archer asks Angela Peppiatt to fill in engagements for September 8-9 1986 in new A4 1986 diary from a list in his handwriting.

The conspiracy
How a false alibi lit a 14-year fuse


Twists and turns of a complex cover-up that corrupted those closest to him

Paul Kelso
Friday July 20, 2001
The Guardian

It was a little before 1am on a cool night in early September 1986 when Monica Coghlan walked out of the Albion Hotel on to Gillingham Street, Victoria, with her third client of the evening. They had just had sex in room 6a and were about to drive back in his blue Mercedes to Coghlan's patch in Shepherd Market, Mayfair.

Across the street a parked car, a Daimler or a Jaguar, flashed its headlights. Coghlan approached the driver's window. After a moment's conversation Coghlan and the driver walked past the Mercedes and into the hotel.

At that moment Jeffrey Archer's 14-year fall from the highest ranks of the Conservative party to Belmarsh prison began.

It was a journey that saw him engineer a complex criminal conspiracy, forge his diaries, procure false alibis and corrupt those around him. He sacrificed the probity and reputation of his wife, his mistress, his personal assistant and several friends to save himself at the high court in 1987.

Two of them, Ted Francis and his personal assistant Angela Peppiatt, had their revenge as his lies unravelled at the Old Bailey 14 years later.

Despite two trials and years of investigation by Archer's biographer, Michael Crick, it is impossible to be categorical about what happened that night.

But we are now as close as we will ever be to answering the central mystery of Archer's extraordinary career; was he the man who followed Monica Coghlan into the Albion Hotel? And if he wasn't, why did he go to such extraordinary lengths to prove it?

Coghlan, killed in a car accident this year, always said it was him. In the high court she was emphatic. She said Archer first approached her on the evening of September 8 in Shepherd Market on foot, before going to fetch his car. While he was gone another client picked her up. Archer followed them to Victoria and waited.

In room 6a Archer gave her £70 and they undressed. "It was over very quickly - with getting undressed and the actual sex 10 minutes," she said in court. "Because it was over so quickly I suggested that he relax for a while and we try again. I got up. I cleaned him, washed him down with tissues and dried him - He told me he sold cars. He got dressed. He left."

In 1999, in her last interview before her death, she said: "I told the truth. He ruined my life and it is time he admitted just what he has done."

The driver of the blue Mercedes that September night was Aziz Kurtha, a businessman. He recognised Archer and contacted the News of the World. Two months later, on October 26 1986, the NoW published details of an extraordinary encounter between Coghlan and Michael Stacpoole, Archer's fixer, on platform three at Victoria station.

Mr Stacpoole offered her an envelope stuffed with £50 notes to leave the country. Coghlan was wearing a hidden microphone. The NoW did not allege that Archer and Coghlan had had sex but the implication was clear. Archer denied the allegations and resigned as deputy chairman of the Conservative party the next day.

On November 2 the Daily Star went further, alleging that Archer had picked up Coghlan at the hotel and paid her £70 for "perverted sex". On Bonfire Night Archer issued a writ for libel and a 14-year fuse began to burn.

Girlfriends

The allegations came when Archer's star was at its brightest. He was at the heart of Tory high command, and was socialising and womanising at a level he had long dreamed of.

For seven years he had lived a double life, keeping Ms Colquhoun in London and returning to his wife Mary at weekends. He had six or seven other girlfriends, the Old Bailey heard, and another prostitute, Dorette Douglas, was willing to testify he had visited her.

But Archer knew his political career would not survive if the truth about his private life was aired in court. First he turned to Mr Stacpoole, paying him to leave the country.

Next he set about constructing an alibi. The initial time and date given by the Star's solicitors for the assignation with Coghlan was between midnight and 1am on the night of September 8-9. Archer did not have a complete explanation for his movements that night.

He told the libel jury he had dined with his literary agent, Richard Cohen, and Mr Cohen's wife at Le Caprice, a fashionable restaurant five minutes' walk from Shepherd Market. That dinner broke up no later than 11pm, leaving Archer with two hours to account for.

Enter Terence Baker, a theatrical agent Archer was working with on the sale of film rights to his books. In the high court Mr Baker said he had arrived at Le Caprice around 10.45pm on September 8 where he met Archer.

The pair sat at the bar for around two hours, he said, before Archer drove him home to Camberwell. This was almost certainly a lie.

Before his death in 1991 Baker told a series of friends that he had perjured himself. Among them was Nick Elliott, controller of drama at ITV. Mr Elliott told solicitors acting for the Star that Baker told him he did meet Archer by chance at Le Caprice that evening, but that they had parted outside the restaurant.

The pair had previously arranged to dine at a restaurant in Chelsea, Sambuca, the following night. With no alternative to hand, Archer asked Baker to testify that they had been together until well after 1am.

With Baker on side Archer was confident of victory. But by January 1987 he was forced to seek a new alibi. The cause of his difficulty was mundane. On December 23 1986 the Star lodged its defence against the writ, drafted by a junior counsel.

This document referred to the encounter between Archer and Coghlan as occurring on "September 10 at 1am", a day later than the initial allegation. The source of that error was Coghlan.

In a confused statement she had said she saw Archer "between 2400 midnight and 0100 am on Tuesday 10th September". In fact the 10th was the Wednesday, not the Tuesday. The counsel followed the date, not the day.

The allegation now appeared to centre on the evening and early hours of September 9-10, not 8-9. Suddenly the goalposts had shifted.

Archer faced a dilemma. Baker had told Lord Mishcon, Archer's solicitor, that he had been with Archer on the 8th, and he could not admit the meal on the 9th without attracting suspicion. His solution was to enlist the help of another friend, freelance TV producer Ted Francis.

In January 1987 Archer invited him to dinner at Sambuca, where he asked him: "What were you doing on September 9 1986? Could it be possible you were having dinner with me here - will you do that?" On the assumption he was helping Archer avoid a "marital embarrassment", Mr Francis agreed.

He wrote two letters to Lord Mishcon stating they had been together on the night of the 9th. It was here that Archer betrayed his mistress, leading Mr Francis to believe he had been at dinner with Ms Colquhoun. In fact she was in Greece with her future husband.

By April 1987 the error in the Star's defence was identified and the allegation reverted to September 8-9. But in the meantime Archer's PA, Mrs Peppiatt, had been helping her employer construct the false alibi for September 9-10.

Mr Francis's false statement said he had dined with Archer at Sambuca before returning home to take a call from Telly Savalas. He said he had then called Archer at Alembic House to tell him about the call.

But Archer was not at home that night, he was with Terence Baker. To produce a plausible statement Archer asked Mrs Peppiatt to research the TV schedules for September 9. These details were woven into Archer's statement.

He turned to Mrs Peppiatt again when he needed a forged diary to back up his story. In April 1987 he gave her a blank diary for 1986 and list of dates and names in his handwriting. He instructed her to fill in the names on the blank pages relating to the September 8 and 9.

For the 8th Archer wanted three entries, including "Dinner, Cohens, 8.30". On the 9th there were three more, including "Terence Baker".

The crown argued that by omitting the time and place of the Baker meal in the bogus diary Archer could argue the entry was an aide memoire from the previous evening. It also provided him with insurance should any evidence of the meal with Baker on the 9th come to light.

On May 11 photocopies of these two pages were faxed to the Star's solicitors but they insisted on seeing the original. On May 26 he again gave Mrs Peppiatt the bogus diary and asked her to fill in the pages for the week September 5-12 1986.

By now deeply suspicious that she was being implicated in a conspiracy, she took out insurance. Taking the bogus diary and the handwritten list she drove to a photocopying shop in Westminster.

She copied the blank pages of the diary alongside a copy of the Times for that day. She also copied the paper Archer had scrawled his new entries on.

Keeping the receipt for 30p she returned to the office and filled in the diary as per Archer's instructions, then took further copies and wrote a statement, witnessed and signed by another PA, describing what she had done. She then drove to the offices of Lord Mishcon's firm, Mishcon de Reya, and handed over the forged diary.

On June 17 Archer swore an affidavit on the diary, perjuring himself in the process. He did so again in the high court.

For two weeks in July 1987 the libel action captured public attention. Guided by a wholly unjust summing up from Justice Caulfield, the jury found against the Star. Archer held a celebratory cocktail party attended by the lord chancellor the next weekend, and carried on much as before.

It was not until November 1999, when the NoW called for the second time, that the lies emerged. Mr Francis had resisted the temptation to tell his story for 13 years. But the prospect of a man he knew to be a calculating liar holding high office proved too much.

In the autumn of 1999, after hearing Archer had been selected as Tory candidate for London mayor, he called the publicist Max Clifford.

Clifford called the NoW, which agreed the story was worth £150,000. But Mr Francis was not interested in a six-figure sum. Instead he settled for £14,000 to buy a second-hand Audi, and a further £5,000 he split between two charities. Mr Clifford, meanwhile, banked £30,000.

The NoW set up a telephone sting. It had worked in 1987 when Monica Coghlan called Archer and he agreed to pay her off, and it worked again now.

On November 4 Mr Francis called Archer, telling him a journalist had discovered the false alibi. Archer's response was damning: "We've got to be careful, Ted. We don't want to go to a court of law with this." Mr Francis called again four days later. "Why did we cook up the alibi?" he asked. "They got the wrong day," Archer replied.

Ten days later, on Friday 19, the NoW confronted Archer with its evidence. He initially denied the allegations, but was soon pleading with them to keep the story to an inside page.

By now he knew his mayoral ambitions were buried. The next day he withdrew from the race and admitted he had procured a false alibi. On the Sunday came the crushing blow as Scotland Yard launched an investigation.

Astonishingly, until that moment Archer assumed he was simply facing another sex scandal. This morning there can be no such doubt in his mind.

Author bribed his way out of trouble


Employees who knew about his sleazy lifestyle were paid large sums to keep quiet, writes Adam Raphael

Sunday July 22, 2001
The Observer

Lord Archer was blackmailed for more than a decade by associates who threatened to expose the fact that he had defrauded the Inland Revenue, habitually consorted with prostitutes and told lies throughout his political career.

Michael Stacpoole, who was employed by Archer as a bag-man on a retainer of £1,000 a month, has admitted that he was paid by the novelist to go to Paris during the 1987 libel trial against the Daily Star so that he would not be available as a witness.

What Stacpoole, who describes himself as a PR fixer, has never admitted publicly is that he demanded £150,000 from Archer as the price of his silence. If he was not paid, he threatened he would expose the perjury and the false alibis which Archer had used to win his libel trial against the Star. 'I know what it's worth,' he told me. 'It's worth £150,000. I am trying to close a deal with Jeffrey.' Stacpoole, who arrived at my house in Notting Hill Gate shortly after the end of the libel trial in a crumpled pinstripe suit, smelling of gin, sought to justify his demands for money from his employer saying that Archer had reneged on a deal to split his £500,000 libel winnings. He claimed that he had been paid only £40,000, less than a fifth of what he was owed.

Archer clearly feared that Stacpoole could blow the whistle on his criminal behaviour. In 1995, he persuaded an American friend, James Irwin, head of an international consultancy firm, IMPAC, to buy the publication rights to Stacpoole's story. Four years later, Irwin's company applied for an injunction in a vain attempt to stop Stacpoole selling his story for more than £100,000.

Stacpoole is not the only person who secured money from Archer as the price of their silence. But the episode is revealing for the light it casts on one of the central mysteries of the 1987 case. Why did Archer pay more than £2,000 to the prostitute Monica Coghlan, a woman he claimed never to have met? The explanation given by his counsel, Lord Alexander, was that 'false stories can damage reputations just as much as true ones'. The true explanation is that Archer is someone who got used to paying large sums of money to stop his misdeeds being exposed.

In the end it was disputes over money that brought him down. If Archer had not slighted television producer Ted Francis by reminding him at one of his shepherd's pie and Krug champagne parties that he owed him £20,000, it is possible that the truth of the bogus alibis might never have emerged.

The slight in front of other guests so enraged Francis that he harboured a grudge against Archer which finally drove him into the arms of Max Clifford and the News of the World .

Angela Peppiatt, Archer's secretary and the crucial prosecution witness in the criminal trial, also had a monetary dispute with her boss which soured their relationship. She said in court that he had reneged on a promise to give her a £10,000 bonus following his libel victory against the Star .

When I met Peppiatt six months after the libel trial, she was in a very agitated state. The reason she had agreed to see me, she said, was that she wanted to warn me that Archer would go to any lengths to destroy me. When I laughed and asked what Archer could do to me apart from having my dustbins searched, she shook her head impatiently. She kept on asking if I realised what I was taking on. 'He will stop at nothing,' she said. Unfortunately Peppiatt was not willing to tell me all she knew. I had told her that if she wanted money for her story, I was the wrong person to come to.

If Peppiatt and others who worked for Archer, such as former Conservative MP David Faber, had come forward earlier and told what they knew, then it would not have taken 14 years before he faced criminal charges.

Peppiatt has not explained why she kept silent for so long and hid the crucial evidence of the diaries. It is possible that she was genuinely terrified of what Archer might do to her and her children. But it is also possible that she feared the consequences of the damaging publicity she would have to face as a result of giving evidence in a criminal trial.

His guilt was writ large


Adam Raphael has long known the truth about Archer, but has been unable to reveal it, thanks to a system that protects the rich and powerful

Special report: Jeffrey Archer

Sunday July 22, 2001
The Observer

Fourteen years ago, Jeffrey Archer threw a party at his home in Grantchester to celebrate his libel victory over the Daily Star. His political friends were there in force to toast his record £500,000 bonanza in Krug champagne. The guests included Michael Havers, the Lord Chancellor; Norman Lamont, Treasury Minister; David Mellor, Foreign Office Minister; David Owen, husband of Archer's literary agent, and Stewart Steven, the then editor of the Mail on Sunday .

The party was a sign that Archer's political career was once again on track. His reputation restored, he was proposed for a peerage, first by Margaret Thatcher and then by John Major. The Honours Scrutiny Committee, in charge of vetting candidates, turned down the first request but felt it could not block a second prime ministerial nomination.

The newly ennobled Lord Archer became the Conservative candidate for London's mayor with the backing of yet another Tory leader, William Hague, who declared him to be a man of 'integrity and honour'.

The truth finally emerged in the Central Criminal Court last week. Or at least some of it did. There was no mention in the trial that Archer frequently consorted with prostitutes, nor that he had been the subject of repeated blackmail, nor that he had paid a key witness to go abroad so that he could not be called to give evidence in the libel trial.

Nor was it mentioned that at one time he smuggled large sums of money in cash to and from the Channel Islands to avoid British income tax.

I should declare here a personal interest. As a witness who was forced under subpoena to give evidence for the Daily Star in Archer's libel trial, I belong to a not very select band of journalists who over the years have become obsessed by the fact that such an obvious charlatan should have been allowed to play a prominent role in British public life.

Truth will out, but it has taken an unconscionably long time. I knew, thanks to a conversation with Archer two weeks before his libel case began in July 1987, that he would do almost anything, including perjury, to advance his political career. In the event, the jury chose to believe his story that he had never met the prostitute Monica Coghlan, despite admitting that he had paid £2,000 to buy her silence.

The verdict implied that the jury disbelieved my evidence that Archer had admitted to me, in a late-night, unattributable telephone conversation, that he had met Coghlan. The judgment in favour of Archer, though widely considered as bizarre as Judge Bernie Caulfield's over-the-top ('was she fragrant?') summing-up, did not surprise me.

Libel actions are a lottery. The jury, I believed, had been keener to show their disapproval of the methods used by the tabloids to entrap the Tory party deputy chairman than to judge what had actually taken place that night in a seedy hotel near Victoria Station.

What did worry me was an article attacking me for having revealed Archer as my source. 'Funny isn't it how it's the journalists who come from the so-called quality papers which claim to uphold journalistic standards who time after time fail to understand where honour and integrity lie,' concluded a venomous editorial written in mid-trial by Stewart Steven.

This attack on me by one of Archer's media allies was not just defamatory but also a contempt of court. So I asked for an apology, pointing out that I been obliged to give evidence and that I had warned Archer that if he gave a false account of our conversation under oath, I would not feel bound by confidence. Characteristically, the editor of the Mail on Sunday refused to apologise and stalled for time.

The need to finance what threatened to be a potentially ruinous libel action led me to investigate what had actually happened in the Archer case. I spent the next six months poring over the trial transcript, interviewing the lawyers and the key witnesses in the case, and others who had crucial information but who oddly had not been called by the Star to give evidence. It soon became clear that the trial had been a travesty of justice. Archer had not just lied about his conversation with me; he had repeatedly perjured himself throughout the trial.

On 9 March 1988, I wrote a 25-page note to Donald Trelford, then editor of The Observer, detailing my findings and urging publication. The memo said that three potential witnesses - Angela Peppiatt, Archer's former personal assistant, David Faber, his political aide, and Michael Stacpoole, who acted as Archer's bagman - were in a position to give first-hand evidence about 'the lies over the [Archer] marriage, the pay-off [to Monica] and, most important of all, about the construction of the false alibi'.

The new evidence that I had found was a diary entry indicating that Archer had dined with his crucial alibi witness, Terence Baker, a theatrical agent, not on 8 September 1986, the date on which his tryst with Monica was alleged to have occurred, but on the following evening at Sambuca, an Italian restaurant near London's Sloane Square.

'This new evidence,' I wrote, 'shows that both Archer and Baker lied about the alibi, and that other diary entries were corrupt.' My memo concluded that allegations of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice were so serious that the standard of proof would have to be correspondingly high. But it pointed out that the paper would be fighting in the interests of justice, not on the sordid grounds of entrapment that the Daily Star had had to defend.

My arguments did not persuade either the editor or the management of The Observer. I was angry and depressed that Trelford was not interested in my pursuing the story, let alone publishing it. But in calmer moments, I realised that his attitude was not unreasonable. Archer had just won a huge libel action which, together with his legal expenses, cost the Daily Star more than £1 million. To publish much graver criminal allegations would be a huge risk.

It would be easy to blame the chilling effect of the law of libel or the paper's financial plight for The Observer 's failure to publish. Other papers, and particularly the BBC, also treated Archer with kid gloves. But such explanations are all too easy. I regret now that I did not threaten to resign from The Observer. I could have taken the story to a paper with more appetite for risk. But at the time, I felt I had other battles to fight, notably my libel action against the Mail on Sunday.

The damage its attack had done to my career as a political journalist was not imaginary. Archer had a lot of political friends. I learnt that the Lord Chancellor had been holding forth in the Garrick Club, saying that he would never trust me to keep a confidence in view of the way I had 'betrayed Archer'. I immediately wrote to Michael Havers, pointing out why I had given evidence.

His reply was cool, saying his comments about my conduct had got 'rather fiercer in the retelling', but that he was concerned that I had co-operated with the Daily Star, otherwise its counsel would not have dared cross-examine Archer about our conversation. I replied that his suspicions were unfounded, adding a clear, if impertinent, hint that even Lord Chancellors were not immune from being sued for slander.

'I fear you don't appreciate how comments which you make in the privacy of the Garrick are retold around Westminster in a way which is damaging to me. You are, after all, the Lord Chancellor, not just an ordinary Minister.'

That produced the response I was hoping for. Michael Havers replied that I had his 'complete confidence'. The libel action against the Mail on Sunday took longer to resolve. But 18 months later, the paper apologised in open court, agreed to publish a full retraction for its libel and paid £45,000 to cover my costs and damages.

In a book that I subsequently wrote about the perils of libel actions Grotesque Libels, I suggested that anyone who ventured into the Royal Courts of Justice as a libel claimant had to be rich, a gambler or pigheaded.

I plead guilty in spades to the last; Lord Archer has all three characteristics. He is often thought of as a clever man. But, in truth, he is not. Only someone stupid would allow himself to be trapped twice by the same sting over the telephone by the same paper.

Archer is certainly rich. The £2.2m now claimed by the Daily Star, which wants its libel damages and costs back with interest, will not make much of a dent in his considerable fortune, acquired by writing popular novels.

He is also beyond question a gambler. Only someone with nerves of steel would be prepared to go into court knowing that his whole case was based on lies. His other characteristic is resilience. I have little doubt that he will bounce out of jail in two years' time. Like the hero in Arnold Bennett's The Card, the odd spot of adversity will not dent his ability to entertain and flatter the famous.

• Adam Raphael is a former political editor of The Observer

Transcript
This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.


More Archer woes

AM Archive - Saturday, 21 July , 2001 00:00:00

Reporter: Michael Dodd and Philip Williams

HAMISH ROBERTSON: After spending his first day in gaol, Britain's most famous new prisoner, the novelist and peer Lord Jeffrey Archer, has a whole new set of problems and indignatories to worry about. Among them is the growing political pressure to strip Archer of his right to sit in the House of Lords.

The Prime Minister's office, which had said it had no plans to strip Lord Archer of his peerage, has now hinted that it might change its mind after pressure from both sides of the House of Commons.

And following Archer's conviction for perjury and perverting the course of justice, the British papers now feel free to publish everything they know about him.

This report from Philip Williams and Michael Dodd in London.

MICHAAEL DODD: If the newspapers are to find their way inside Britain's toughest jail, they won't make comforting reading for prisoner Archer as he shares them around with Ronnie Biggs and the others.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'He lied, paid and sued his way to the top. Yesterday his world collapsed.

His life was built on fiction. But in the final chapter, the facts caught up with him.'

MICHAEL DODD: Declared the Independent.

And:

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'Once upon a time there was a great liar.'

MICHAEL DODD: Proclaimed the Times.

And true to form, Rupert Murdoch's sex obsessed Sun told its drooling readers more than just the saucy details about Archer's famous dalliance with prostitute Monica Coghlan, which has ruined his life. It also broadened the story to talk about his general predilection for call galls.

'He liked tarts on top' the Sun disclosed. 'Hookers' tales of steamy sex with shamed Tory peer.'

And the Sun also had plenty to say about the mistresses too, under the headline 'Lust for blonds'.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'Geoffrey Archer had a passion for blonds, and cheated on his wife Mary for more than 20 years, with three fair-haired mistresses.'

MICHAEL DODD: But lest it be thought that any racial prejudice was involved in Archer's tastes, the Mirror helpfully has some balancing details. It quoted his former aide Michael Stackpool as saying:

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'He liked black women. It seemed to give him a big thrill. Some were prostitutes. We'd go our own way at the end of some evening. And the next day I would ask him how was it with this or that woman. And he's always say he'd enjoyed himself immensely.'

MICHAEL DODD: And Michael Stackpool knew Archer well enough to know. After all, he was the man who famously handed over the envelope full of cash to Monica Coghlan at Victoria Station to encourage her to leave the country.

But the Daily Mail had an even more surprising revelation:

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'MI5 spied on his sex sessions with Monica.'

MICHAEL DODD: The paper said two MI5 agents watched in disbelief as he ushered her into a seedy London hotel for a 70-pound sex session - an encounter the peer has denied for 15 years.

The paper said the spy's surveillance details are part of the security services' dossier on Archer's erratic lifestyle throughout the 1980s.

So, why hadn't MI5 come forward with this information earlier?

The Mail says:

PHILIP WILLIAMS: 'Had the report become known in 1987, Archer would almost certainly have lost his libel case against the Daily Star. But it was kept silent because the security service chiefs said the surveillance operation, set up amid fears that Archer was on an IRA hit list, was to protect, not to expose him.'

MICHAEL DODD: And if that's not enough for Archer to worry about, he's also got to think about his wife Mary, who's stood by him through all his ups and downs.

Under the headline 'Mary may be charged', the Daily Express says:

'The wife of crooked Lord Archer was facing a possible police investigation last night.'

Her problem is that she gave evidence backing the authenticity of the fake diary Archer had made to underpin his false alibis. The jury clearly didn't believe Mary's evidence was truthful. And this is where many in the media think the next Archer scandal might be coming from.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Michael Dodd in London.