Jonathan King: 'I have had a brilliant time'

After more than three years in jail for sexually abusing teenage boys, music mogul Jonathan King was freed yesterday, brandishing his trademark grin, free CDs - and a refusal to admit his guilt

Some emerge with their heads bowed, vowing to mend their ways. Others speed out of the gates, scattering the waiting media. But for celebrity prisoner FF8782, release from jail was simply another opportunity to do what he does best - talk about himself.

At 7.10am yesterday, Jonathan King, sex offender and pop mogul, emerged through the stout wooden door of Maidstone Prison's main gate wearing an Armani suit and his trademark grin to declare his innocence and plug his new single.

Where Jonathan Aitken issued a mea culpa and Jeffrey Archer dashed to wordless freedom in a BMW, Mr King marked his return to civvy street with a bravura show of chutzpah that culminated in a quotation from Oscar Wilde and a vow to fight miscarriages of justice.

Surrounded by photographers and reporters, the 60-year-old impresario insisted he had wrongly spent the last three years, six months and three days in jail for the predatory sexual abuse of teenage boys.

With greying temples and a figure slimmed by a recent hospitalisation for internal bleeding, he said: "I have had an absolutely brilliant three and a half years in prison for crimes I did not commit.

"What remains is that I am absolutely 100 per cent innocent of the crimes and my lawyer tells me he will quash my conviction by appeal. But I am not that important.

"Think of the people who have been locked up for crimes they did not commit, some of whom have committed suicide or will kill themselves in prison. They are the people I care about and will crusade for."

But for the man who made his first fortune as a Cambridge undergraduate by singing "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", the attempt to claim the moral high ground went hand-in-hand with efforts to improve his bank balance.

As he spoke, Mr King's aides handed out CDs of his new record, a version of "My Love, My Life", a track once sung by Abba. In the sleeve-notes, the record producer cited other artists called immoral for their behaviour, from Elvis Presley to Michelangelo. He wrote: "Don't play this track if you believe everything you see or read in the media and if you feel you should only listen to music or appreciate art if you approve of the artiste's personal morality."

Refusing to answer further questions outside the Kent prison, Mr King chose to identify himself with Wilde, suggesting the Victorian writer's imprisonment for homosexuality was analogous to his own conviction for using his "fame and success" to abuse boys as young as 14. The mogul, who counts Genesis and 10CC among his discoveries and claimed last week to have made more than £200,000 from royalties while in prison, said: "I intend to leave as Oscar Wilde almost said as he was released from prison 100 years ago for crimes which were similar, 'On to the next adventure'."

In so doing, Mr King claimed to have received support from diverse sources, ranging from the renowned criminal, Kenneth Noye, with whom he shares a lawyer, and Prince Charles. Clarence House, sniffing further unwanted publicity in the run-up to the Prince's marriage on 8 April, issued a swift denial, saying that his office had sent him a standard reply to a speculative letter.

Mr King, who shares his legal adviser Giovanni di Stefano with Saddam Hussein among others, was jailed for seven years in September 2001 after he was found guilty of six offences against boys aged 14 and 15, including one charge of buggery. The court heard that the impresario picked up victims while driving in his Rolls Royce and conducted the assaults at his home in Bayswater, west London.

The producer, writer and singer has not denied having sex with young men but insisted all the relationships were consensual and could not be described as "paedophilia". His legal team is awaiting a judicial review of the decision by the Criminal Cases Review Commission not to refer his case to the Court of Appeal.

In a television interview following his return to London yesterday, Mr King denied that he had abused his position as a celebrity. "No, I used my position as a celebrity. I was famous, I was extremely handsome, I was stunningly talented in every possible way, and that makes me very attractive."

Critics of the decision to grant Mr King parole have pointed to his lack of remorse for his offences as grounds for his continued imprisonment. One of his victims told BBC News: "He has not attended any programme for addressing his offending behaviour. And as far as his attitude is concerned, he hasn't changed at all."

Under the rules of his parole, Mr King is banned from working with children, must stay at a specified address and cannot receive visits from anyone aged under 18 without police permission. He has also been placed on the sex offenders' register.

KING'S CRIMES

Despite a career in the public eye spanning three decades, it was only in an Old Bailey courtroom that Jonathan King's abuse of teenage boys came to light. His trial in 2001 heard that he used the pretext of researching musical tastes among the young to persuade his victims to return to his £1.2m west London home. Mr King, who denied all the charges, was found to have visited nightclubs to meet young men during the 1980s, offering his victims a lift home in his Rolls Royce. Some victims were picked up at the Walton Hop disco in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Once alone, victims testified that the Cambridge graduate gave them drink and showed them pornographic magazines and videos before committing his assaults. He was convicted of four indecent assaults and two serious sexual offences against boys.