Archer case lawyer 'never believed the diaries'

Jeffrey Archer's victorious 1987 libel case would have "unravelled like a damaged sweater" if suspicions about him forging a crucial diary could have been investigated at the time, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

Michael Hill, the QC who represented the Daily Star, which lost and paid £500,000 in damages, claimed the outcome would have been very different if the extent of the alleged deceit of Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare had been known. The counsel said he never believed that one of the diaries the Tory peer produced for the High Court jury was genuine, but the rules and procedures of the law did not allow him to pursue the matter during the trial.

On the 12th day of his trial for alleged perjury and forgery, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman sat in the dock, leaning forward to listen to Mr Hill as the QC recalled their dramatic courtroom confrontation 13 years and four months ago.

Mr Hill spoke in the measured and precise tones of a barrister of 43 years' experience, his glance occasionally drifting over to Lord Archer. He said the diary now being produced as the genuine one by the prosecution was not the one given to the jury to consider at the 1987 trial.

The diary produced then had been masked with sellotape and brown tape so that only one and half pages were visible. Mr Hill said that if Lord Archer's diary could have been proved to be bogus, his alibi for the night he is alleged to have had sex with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, would have been exposed as a lie.

He said: "It would have been like pulling wool out of a damaged sweater. As you go on pulling it and pulling it the sweater unravels; the unravelling of that sweater is what I would have expected ... [But] in this case, whatever my suspicion had been, the rules of procedure would not have allowed me pursue this."

Mr Hill said his suspicion was aroused by "other material which emerged in the case and other accounts given by Mr Archer which were inconsistent with what was on the page."

Mary Archer made her third appearance at the Old Bailey yesterday since the start of her husband's trial. On the two previous occasions she spent just 15 minutes in court. Yesterday, she stayed until the lunch break when there was a very public and affectionate parting. Lady Archer posed obligingly for photos with her husband outside the front door. She then kissed him before leaving in achauffeur-driven BMW. For days the court had heard tales of Lord Archer's alleged affairs, of how he had cheated both his wife and his principal mistress, Andrina Colquhoun, with other lovers, of how his staff had to swap around photographs at his London flat overloooking the Thames, depending on whether the mistress or wife was staying the night.

Lady Archer had not been in the courtroom to listen to that, and she was not in the courtroom yesterday when his legal team made much of his supposedly idyllic marriage during the 1987 case. Mr Hill said it was portrayed "as a happy, mutually supportive, mutually trusting, good marriage".

Roy Amlot QC, appearing for Lord Archer's fellow accused, Ted Francis, read the jury the summing up of the 1987 case by Mr Justice Caulfield: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appear? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure her husband Jeffrey? Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel around about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice? Of course it is possible. But reflect, would you, upon the position?"

Mr Amlot asked Mr Hill: "Did it have an obvious effect on the outcome, do you think?" Mr Hill was not allowed to answer after objections from Lord Archer's counsel, Nicholas Purnell QC.

Earlier, the jury was told a 1986 Economist Diary was bought in January 1987, allegedly on behalf of the peer, by Gavin Pearce, a friend of his secretary at the time, Angela Peppiatt. The Crown alleges it was part of the attempt to fabricate an alibi. Mr Pearce said Ms Peppiatt "wanted me to buy it to distance the purchase from Jeffrey Archer".

Lord Archer, 61, denies four counts of perverting the course of justice, two of perjury and one of using a false instrument. Mr Francis, 67, denies one count of perverting the course of justice. The case continues.