Lawyer 'said spending pounds 200 entitled him to sex'

A SOLICITOR accused of trying to rape a fellow lawyer after a St Andrew's Day Ball later claimed he was entitled to have sexual intercourse because he had spent pounds 200 on her, a court was told yesterday.

Angus Diggle, 37, told a policewoman after the ball at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London: 'Well I have been out with her. I spent pounds 200 on her, why can't I do what I did to her?' an Old Bailey jury heard.

Mr Diggle, of Bolton, Greater Manchester, who denies attempting to rape the 25-year-old woman, was said by Sergeant Jayne Stratton to have threatened to commit suicide as she drove him to Kensington police station in west London.

She told the court: 'I told him that there was no reason to do that and we could sort it all out at the station.'

An insurance underwriter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in the flat in Earls Court on the night of the alleged attack. He told the court that the woman had been left 'an emotional wreck' by her experience. She was 'sobbing, violently shaking, rocking backwards and forwards and trembling.' The underwriter, a close friend of the woman solicitor, was asleep with his fiancee when he heard a piercing scream from the next room. This was followed by the solicitor running naked into his bedroom.

He said that he got up to investigate and found Mr Diggle sprawled on the living room floor. He was naked except for the frilly detachable cuffs of his Highland costume. Mr Diggle seemed drunk and totally unconcerned about the incident. He even insisted, arrogantly, that the insurance underwriter should help him to get dressed.

The underwriter ordered Mr Diggle to leave the flat immediately and his fiancee threw Mr Diggle's briefcase and umbrella out of the front door.

'He kept repeating the words: 'This is so ordinary and you people are so boring. You obviously did not go to public school.' The last comment was directed at me,' the witness said.

The trial continues today.

(Photograph omitted)