It was a case that gripped Scotland — a firebrand leftist lawmaker who claimed he spent nights at home playing Scrabble versus a tabloid that claimed he took part in wild parties at a sex club.
The first jury ruled for Scrabble. The next one decided he’d lied.
So Tommy Sheridan, a former member of Scotland’s Parliament, has been told by a judge to get ready for jail when he returns to a Glasgow court next month for sentencing.
Sheridan mounted a robust defense of his character in a widely followed libel trial against Britain’s feisty News of The World newspaper. Over weeks of riveting testimony, the 46-year-old Sheridan persuaded a jury that he had been wronged by the newspaper, accusing reporters of putting his wife and then-unborn child at risk as a result of the stress.
In one notable exchange that helped Sheridan win damages worth £200,000 (US$310,000), the lawmaker offered to take off his shirt in court to show he was “a hairy ape” and disprove the testimony of an alleged mistress who had suggested he was smooth-chested.
Sheridan’s story sounded almost too good to be true — and a jury in a second trial ruled Thursday that it was, convicting him of perjury.
The ruling is the latest twist in a political career lived out in tabloid headlines.
Sheridan came to prominence protesting the unpopular Poll Tax introduced by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 as part of the new Scottish Socialist Party. He broke away in 2006 to form his own Solidarity party and lost his seat in 2007. Since then he has made failed attempts to win a seat at the European Parliament and Britain’s House of Commons.
From 2004 on, Sheridan became the target of Britain’s tabloids, facing a series of disparaging stories about his sex life.
The News of the World claimed he was a “spanking swinger” who had slept with a prostitute and attended a swingers’ sex club in Manchester, northern England.
A defiant Sheridan sued the newspaper in 2006, accusing his detractors of either printing salacious gossip to drive newspaper sales or colluding with Britain’s intelligence agencies in a plot to undermine socialist politicians.
A talented, self-confident orator, he defending himself after firing his lawyer and mocked the paper’s allegations as outrageously fanciful.
“From four-in-a-bed to five-in-a-bed. From five-in-a-bed to sex clubs. From sex clubs to champagne. From champagne to cocaine. From cocaine to orgies,” he told the court.
However, nearly a year after his courtroom victory, police arrested and charged Sheridan with perjury in connection with the hearing.
Rather than shy away from publicity, Sheridan instead appeared in the 2009 edition of Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother reality television show, performing an ice-skating routine with LaToya Jackson and songs with rap artist Coolio.
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia