The motor racing boss Max Mosley admitted a secret 45-year history of sadomasochism in court yesterday but denied the News of the World's claims that he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy.
Mosley was speaking in the Royal Courts of Justice on the opening day of his extraordinary case against the News of the World for invading his privacy. There was rarely a dull moment in a packed court 13 as the 68-year-old began his attempt to sue the newspaper for exemplary damages after it clandestinely filmed him in March this year enjoying what it described as a "sick Nazi orgy".
Mosley maintains the gathering was a private "party" for himself and five like-minded, consenting women, and there was no public interest in reporting it.
Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body, the FIA, and son of the 1930s fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, was forced to speak frankly about his sexual peccadilloes - what he calls his "unfortunate interest". He said carrying the Mosley name had clouded his life and explained why being whipped hurt less than jumping into a cold swimming pool.
James Price QC, representing Mosley, said his client's interest in S&M was not degrading or sick, and accused the News of the World of being out of touch with modern life. "It's not a surprise to me or to others who don't live in an ivory tower or a monastery, or, I am sure, to your lordship, to learn that quite a lot of people, men and women, have a fascinated interest in this sort of thing," he told the judge, Mr Justice Eady.
Price said there was no evidence that the roleplays had any Nazi overtones. "If the newspaper was hoping to get pictures of the claimant doing a Nazi salute or saying 'Sieg heil!' or dressing in the uniform of a concentration camp commandant - which we know they were - they were to be completely disappointed," he said.
He added: "This trial is not a forum for debating the evils or otherwise of Sir Oswald Mosley. The sins of the father cannot justifiably be visited upon the son, who was born at a time when the British Union of Fascists was simply a memory and when Britain was already at war with Nazi Germany."
Mosley said he could think of "few things more unerotic than Nazi roleplay", particularly because of the special "associations" it held for him. Asked by the newspaper's counsel what he meant, he said: "All my life, I have had hanging over me my antecedents, my parents, and the last thing I want to do in some sexual context is be reminded of it."
His QC showed the judge pictures of prisoners interned in Belsen concentration camp, to demonstrate the differences between their uniforms and those worn during Mosley's session. He produced an invoice showing the costumes had been bought from a joke shop in 2007, and compared them to fancy dress outfits worn by marathon runners.
The article accused Mosley of playing a concentration camp prisoner in one scenario, but Price said that in this scene, Mosley was pretending to be someone called Timothy Barnes and was being watched over by a guard who said she was called "Officer Smith". What's more, this roleplay was entirely in English. Hardly, said Price, the stuff of Auschwitz.
When Mark Warby QC, for the News of the World, asked why in another scenario, conducted mostly in German, one of the women being "punished" could clearly be heard protesting "but we are the Aryan race, the blondes", Mosley said it must have been a "throwaway line" which he had not heard at the time.
Mosley said the scene was in German because he could speak it and because one of the women involved, known in court as Woman B, was German.
The News of the World's defence is threefold: that there were Nazi elements at play; that Mosley's high-profile job meant he had a responsibility to behave himself and exposing him was in the public interest; and that there was an element of criminality, because in one scene Mosley bled after being spanked, and this act of violence was against the law.
Mosley scoffed at this suggestion, saying the pain was pleasurable. "I would far rather do that than, for example, jump into a cold swimming pool," he said.
He seemed surprised about his secret getting out. "I've been doing [S&M] for 45 years and there's never been the slightest hint of that coming out and, if it hadn't been for bribery and illegal acts, this wouldn't have come out."
Mosley is claiming exemplary damages for the distress caused to himself and his family by the article and accompanying video, which has been watched by millions on the News of the World website. He told the court the episode had been "devastating" for his wife, who had not known of "this aspect" of his life.
Exemplary damages are not awarded in order to compensate the claimant, but to punish the offender. The case is expected to last two weeks.
