MOTORSPORT boss Max Mosley told yesterday how he enjoyed sadomasochistic role-playing.
The 68-year-old said he had enjoyed the thrill of corporal punishment among consenting people from a "young age".
But the High Court in London heard his life had been devastated by a tabloid exposé of what it called a "sick Nazi orgy" with five p
rostitutes. And he attacked the News of the World for acting like a "peeping Tom" by secretly taping the encounter.
His lawyer, James Price, QC, said the effect on Mr Mosley's relationships with family, friends and business colleagues could only be imagined, and he called for an unprecedented award of punitive exemplary damages in a breach of privacy case.
"The loss of human dignity, the loss of the claimant's right to the esteem and respect of other people, the humiliation, the extent to which he is demeaned, are of the highest form and we say warrant the maximum compensation," he told the court.
Mr Price claimed the newspaper's conduct had brought "shame on British journalism".
He said the story, with its accompanying film on the paper's website, which has so far been viewed three and a half million times, was a "gross and indefensible intrusion" by the newspaper in its role as "Peeping Tom".
He said it was made substantially worse by the "shocking and entirely false" suggestion that it depicted Mr Mosley, president of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile), playing a concentration camp commandant and a cowering death camp inmate.
Mr Mosley told Mr Justice Eady, who is hearing the case without a jury, that there "was not even a hint" of Nazi behaviour during the sadomasochistic session in March at a basement flat in Chelsea, London, for which he paid the women £2,500.
"I can think of few things more unerotic than Nazi role-play", Mr Mosley, the son of 1930s fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, 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. I wouldn't consider my parents to be Nazi, but there is obviously a link."
He added that his sexual behaviour, in which he had indulged for 45 years, was completely out of the scope of his work, and that the exposé had had most effect on his family.
"My wife and I have been married for 48 years and together for more than 50 – we met as teenagers – and she never knew of this aspect of my life, so that headline in the newspaper was completely, totally devastating for her and there is nothing that I can say that can ever repair that.
"Also, for my two sons, I don't think there is anything worse for a son than to see in a newspaper, particularly one like the News of the World, pictures of the kind they printed."
Asked if he had done anything to deserve it, he replied: "Absolutely not. I fundamentally disagree with the suggestion that any of this is depraved, fundamentally disagree with the fact that it is immoral.
"I think it is a perfectly harmless activity, provided it is between consenting adults who want to do it, are of sound mind, and it is in private."
News Group Newspapers, which owns the News of the World, is contesting the action and argues publication was justified in the public interest. It said it was a "legitimate and lawful story".
The hearing continues.
The full article contains 597 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
