Britain Spare Pennies

By William R. Doerner

The case that unfolded in Room 13 of London's High Court contained all the elements necessary for a topping midsummer titillation. It included charges of illicit sex, payoffs, skulduggery in high political places and a celebrity plaintiff. Small wonder, then, that hardly a seat was vacant during the 14 days of testimony and summation in the libel suit brought against the Star, a lurid London tabloid, by best-selling Novelist (First Among Equals, Kane and Abel) and former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Jeffrey Archer. The charge: that the Star falsely claimed that Archer had purchased the services of a London prostitute. Last week the jury of eight men and four women wrote a happy ending for the novelist. After deliberating for less than four hours, they found in Archer's favor, awarding him $800,000 in damages plus legal ^ costs, which are expected to run to $1.2 million. The award was the highest ever granted in a British libel case.

The lawsuit grew out of the revelation last November by the News of the World, a rival tabloid, that Archer, 47, had offered to pay for an overseas trip by Monica Coghlan, a 36-year-old London call girl. Coghlan had claimed to the News of the World that Archer paid her $100 to have sex with her. The paper urged her to call Archer, who offered to pay her $3,000 for a trip out of the country to escape reporters. The tabloid then published an account of those conversations but never explicitly claimed that Archer had known Coghlan in the past. Archer denied any prior association with Coghlan, claiming that he had "foolishly" suggested the foreign trip because he feared her story would be politically damaging. Nonetheless, he resigned his Tory office, to which he had been appointed a year earlier by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Though Archer has also filed suit against the News, he moved first against the Star, which printed a follow-up story six days after the original revelation. That story gave much more credence to the part of the episode that Archer continued to deny, the claim that he had had sex with Coghlan in a seedy London hotel one night last September. During the trial Coghlan, 36, who admitted to having sex with "thousands" of men during a 19-year career as a prostitute, testified that Archer had approached her in Shepherd Market, an area off fashionable Park Lane favored by streetwalkers. Though the hotel encounter lasted only ten minutes, she said, she was positive of Archer's identity because "for those ten minutes I was lying on top of that man, and I was looking into his eyes."

Archer's case was bolstered by the testimony and daily presence in court of his attractive wife Mary, 42, a former chemistry professor at Cambridge University and the mother of their two teenage sons. The notion of her husband, a former Oxford University track star, buying the services of a hooker was "preposterous," she said, because "anyone who knows Jeffrey would know that, far from him accosting a prostitute, if one approached him, he would run several miles." Besides, she added, she and her husband "lead a full life."

Mrs. Archer broke down on the witness stand defending her husband, while Coghlan dissolved into sobs several times. When Archer's lawyer accused her of concocting the tale in exchange for $10,000 from the News, Coghlan burst out, "You are a liar." At one point, after Coghlan testified that the man she said was Archer had had a pimply back, Mrs. Archer forthrightly declared that her husband possessed "excellent skin." Archer, who did not show his back as evidence, testified that he spent the evening in question dining at a fashionable Mayfair restaurant named Le Caprice. Even the judge seemed sympathetic to the plaintiff, instructing the jurors to think carefully whether Archer was "in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel."

Elected to Parliament as its youngest Member at 29, Archer has had a tumultuous career. He was forced to give up politics and resign from Parliament five years later when bad investments left him near bankruptcy. Those misfortunes became the grist for his first best seller, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1975), a title that his lawyer last week jokingly suggested should serve as a guide to the jury in setting damages. Archer's seven books have sold 30 million copies worldwide, making him a multimillionaire and, until last fall, a star on the Tory speaking circuit. Whether he plans to re-enter politics remains uncertain. But many of his fans will surely be disappointed if his next book does not recycle the anguish -- and vindication -- of his most recent adventure.

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/London