The trial opened to a packed court 10 on 4 June 1997 – more than two years after the action had been launched. Gray told the court how the Guardian had ‘butchered’ Aitken’s personal, political and professional reputation. In addition to claiming Aitken had lied about who had paid the Ritz bill, he listed the other prongs of the case: we’d said that he was in the pockets of the Saudi royal family; had been dabbling in the arms trade; and had been pimping for prostitutes to entertain rich Arabs on their visits to the UK.
There followed eight days of Aitken in the witness box. I popped in from time to time to watch him, my heart sinking as (it seemed to me and others in court) he established an easy-going rapport with Popplewell. The judge later wrote that he found Aitken a ‘very convincing witness’ even though he had simultaneously seen through his lies. He concealed his scepticism about Aitken’s story well, perhaps because the plaintiff was a consummate master of detail. He was understated, but confident. He had an attractive self-deprecatory wit. He told convincingly of his ‘pole-axing’ pain and sleepless nights at reading some of the Guardian allegations – the equivalent, he said, of a heart attack. The coverage, he said, had had a devastating impact on his wife, Lolicia, and their three children. Carman later said he was the best-prepared witness he had ever encountered in court.
Carman had Aitken on the stand for five days of cross-examination. Aitken was evasive about the precise details of how or when his wife (rather than the Saudis) had paid his hotel bill in Paris (‘I can’t even now grip it – exactly who did what where – I wasn’t there’) but Carman struggled to lay a knock-out blow. The onus was on us to demonstrate exactly what had happened. All we knew was what Aitken said had happened: that his wife had been staying at the Hotel Bristol in Villars, Switzerland, before travelling to Paris on the Sunday morning, whereupon she had paid the Ritz bill in cash.
Aitken’s story felt impossible. Everything about the supposed Ritz payment pointed to the fact that he was lying, but we still lacked the documentary evidence to prove it. From Aitken’s point of view the case was going very nicely indeed. He and Popplewell were both cricket lovers, and Aitken would later deploy the game’s imagery, saying: ‘I was on a good wicket, finding myself largely untroubled by Carman’s bowling.’ He heard distant trumpets of victory.
In the course of one slightly gloomy meeting in Carman’s chambers off Gray’s Inn Road to discuss the fact that we had been forced to withdraw part of our pleas on grounds of ‘meaning’, we learned that Granada TV’s insurers were pulling the plug. If the TV executives didn’t settle now, they would refuse to be liable for any subsequent costs. The TV executives themselves wanted to hang in.
All eyes were on me: would the Guardian also fold?
The answer was no. To have said otherwise would have been a terrible betrayal of the reporting that had gone into this story. The journalism had, we felt, been overwhelmingly right, even if we were struggling to defend every single sentence in court under the arcane procedures of English libel cases. I knew I had the backing of our managing director, Caroline Marland, and of the Scott Trust under Hugo Young. But we had to prepare for the possibility that this trial could end in expensive disaster. Unless, unless . . .
. . . unless Carman could, for one last time in his long career, produce a legal rabbit out of the hat. The only chance now was a forlorn one – Bowcott’s mission impossible. And, yet, with that doomed adventure, there was a twist. Bowcott had arrived at the Hotel Bristol and – what were the chances? – found it had recently gone into receivership. He was granted permission to descend into the deserted hotel’s basement to sleuth his way through thousands of shoeboxes containing the old records. And . . . he eventually found something that could conceivably look like a rabbit – Lolicia Aitken’s reservation. It meant little to him so he faxed the paperwork back to Proudler in London.
Proudler began her own forensic examination of what these newly acquired records showed. They seemed to suggest that Lolicia – at the very time when Aitken had said she was having a bath in their room in Paris – had in fact been tucking into a breakfast of cornflakes and apple juice 570 kilometres away in Villars. Proudler was even more interested to see that Lolicia had settled her Bristol bill with an American Express card that had never been disclosed to the defence in the libel trial. Proudler began an investigative journey of her own, demanding all the relevant financial statements from Aitken’s solicitors. We were not to get sight of them until 12 June, more than a week into the hearing.
From those records – car rental, airline tickets, etc. – Proudler was able painstakingly to piece together Lolicia’s movements. It took time. British Airways’ own microfilm archive was held in a warehouse near Heathrow. The airline estimated it could take more than a month to provide the clinching evidence. Proudler offered them help. The detective trail was moving agonisingly slowly.
Back in court, Aitken was by now so confident of success he played one last daring card. Thursday 19 June was so-called ‘Ladies’ Day’ at Ascot races – the day punters dress up to the nines to watch the Gold Cup. In a break in court proceedings the previous day Aitken’s solicitor, Richard Sykes, tipped off the press that it would also be Ladies’ Day in court. Aitken was putting Lolicia and his 17-year-old daughter, Victoria, into the witness box to confirm his story once and for all.
Victoria, then studying for her A levels in Switzerland, had signed a witness statement supporting her father’s version of events with an entirely fabricated story he had drafted for her. Aitken later described this as his ‘worst and most shameful mistake’ but, as he typed out the document of lies, his only thought was: ‘That will do nicely.’ This, surely, would destroy our case and leave his path clear for re-entry into politics . . . and maybe, one day, Downing Street. The humiliation of the Guardian would be complete. My editorship could have been a very short one.
The two women were saved from having to perjure themselves in court.
Shortly before adjournment on 18 June, Carman produced his rabbit. And what an extraordinary rabbit it was. I sat at the back of the court, heart racing, as our QC handed the judge a sworn witness statement from a British Airways investigator, Wendy Harris, showing that Lolicia had never been anywhere near Paris on the relevant dates. She had flown in and out of Geneva. The entire story had therefore been invented by Aitken. Even I (who knew in my heart that his story couldn’t possibly be true) found it barely credible that he would have risked so much – his career, his marriage, his home, his freedom – on such a bare-faced lie.
Popplewell took a moment to absorb the significance of the documents before handing them to Aitken’s QC suggesting, in mild but deadly legal shorthand, that he might wish to consider his position overnight.6 I watched Aitken’s features as the realisation sunk in that the case was lost and his life ruined. But his face was a testament to a privileged upbringing of masks, concealment and reserve – the same semi-amused insouciant smile on his lips. In reality, he later admitted, his head was pounding, his confidence was ‘exploding into tiny pieces like flying shrapnel’.7 He had, as he put it, ‘been caught red-handed’ and in that moment of disaster knew he had lost his whole world. He had unsheathed the ‘simple sword of truth’ only to be impaled upon it.
For Carman, it was the most sensational ending to any trial in his 44 years at the Bar. In Popplewell’s judgement, it had been one of the bitterest and most enthralling libel actions ever heard in an English court.
We adjourned to Proudler’s office for an overnight negotiation of the terms of the settlement. In the middle of the evening the Press Association published a brief story announcing that Aitken and his wife had separated.
Word leaked out that, in place of Ladies’