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.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS