Anvar Khan says she went to Manchester swinger's club with Tommy Sheridan

Former MSP Tommy Sheridan told a journalist that he had visited a sex club on his own, a court heard today.

• Tommy Sheridan and his wife Gail, who are both on trial for perjury, arrive at court in Edinburgh

Ex-News of the World columnist Anvar Khan told the High Court in Glasgow that Sheridan, with whom she claimed to have had several casual sexual encounters, then asked her to accompany him to the club with some friends.

The former Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) MSP is on trial accused of lying under oath during his successful defamation action against the News of the World newspaper in 2006.

Sheridan denies lying to the courts during the action, which followed the newspaper's claims that he was an adulterer who visited swinger's clubs.

He and his wife Gail, both 46, and from Glasgow, are accused of lying under oath. They deny the charges. Sheridan won 200,000 in damages after the newspapers printed the allegations.

But today freelance journalist Anvar Khan, 43, spoke of her initial "surprise" when she said Sheridan told her he had been to the club.

She first met Sheridan in the course of her work as a journalist around 1992 and went on to have sex with him on several occasions, the court heard.

Ms Khan told the court Sheridan had phoned her after she moved from Scotland to London, telling her he had visited a sex club on his own and asking her to go with him.

She said the telephone conversation took place around September 2002.

She said: "He said he had been to a sex club, or a swingers' club. I was surprised. He said: 'I went on my own'.

"He wanted to know if I would go with him and a couple of his friends to this club again.

"I was surprised. I think I may have said: 'Didn't anyone recognise you?'

"I didn't exactly say I was staying in washing my hair. I said it was interesting."

Ms Khan then told the court that Sheridan made arrangements for the trip to the club and she was to fly to Glasgow at the end of September, adding: "I think it could have been September 27."

She said she had become "mates" with Sheridan and asked him for advice on campaigning, as well as looking to him for stories for the newspapers she worked for.

She said there was initially "a very flirtatious atmosphere" between the two and they "had a snog" before making "a date for sex" at his home in the Pollok area of Glasgow in 1992, the court heard.

She told how she had sex with Sheridan beneath a picture of Communist revolutionary Che Guevara.

She said: "What struck me was pictures of left-wing intellectuals on the walls. We went into his bedroom, there was a large picture of Che Guevara above the bed, and we had a shag."

Ms Khan, who is now married but told the court she preferred to use her maiden name during proceedings, said she next saw Sheridan around 1999, or 2000, adding that she "believed" he was now married to his wife Gail.

She said he visited her home in the Kelvindale area of Glasgow on two occasions, once with one person, and once with his brother-in-law Andrew McFarlane and a woman named Suzie.

Advocate depute Alex Prentice QC asked her: "Did you have sexual intercourse?"

She replied: "Yes".

He then asked: "Was anyone else present?"

She said: "Yes".

She said that on the second occasion she had asked Sheridan to bring a "carry-out" with him, saying that he had turned up with around 20 miniature bottles of wine of the type given out on aeroplanes.

She told the court: "I remember being quite taken aback that he didn't understand that a carry-out meant full wine bottles."

The trial, before Lord Bracadale, continues.