Sheridan trial: Alleged mistress told to describe NOTW as "chancers"

A former news editor of the Scottish News of the World told a woman alleged to have had an affair with Tommy Sheridan that the paper were "chancers" before printing a story about it, a court heard today.

Douglas Wight, 37, said he told Fiona McGuire she could use the term to describe the paper as a way of explaining the story which ran in the paper.

Former MSP Sheridan and his wife Gail, both 46, deny lying under oath during his successful defamation action against the News of the World newspaper in 2006.

The action followed the newspaper's claims that Sheridan was an adulterer who visited swinger's clubs.

He won 200,000 in damages after the newspapers printed the allegations about his private life.

Advocate Depute Alex Prentice QC said he had no questions to put to Mr Wight when he took to the witness box at the High Court in Glasgow today and Sheridan moved straight into cross-examination.

He said: "You have described your paper as chancers."

Mr Wight replied: "I used that term as advice to Fiona McGuire. She could use that as a way to describe the story.

"It was said to her that she could say to people that the News of the World had done that, they are chancers."

Sheridan then asked whether he told her she had come over to the "dark side".

The witness said that both remarks were "flippant", adding: "Are you suggesting that I am actually on the dark side and that I am a Jedi knight because it was a Star Wars-related jibe?"

Mr Wight told the High Court that he first became aware of the story involving Ms McGuire through a freelance journalist in the north east, after she "let slip" that she was having a relationship with Sheridan.

Sheridan asked: "Over that period of months you did everything possible to check out her story?"

Mr Wight replied: "Yes."

The indictment against the Sheridans contains three charges in total, two of which are broken into subsections.

It is alleged Sheridan made false statements as a witness in the defamation action of July 21, 2006.

He also denies a charge of attempting to persuade a witness to commit perjury shortly before the 23-day trial got under way.

Mrs Sheridan denies making false statements on July 31, 2006, after being sworn in as a witness in the civil jury trial.