Clark wins case over spoof diary using his name

The Tory MP, Mr Alan Clark (65), yesterday won his case in London's High Court against the Evening Standard over a diary column…

The Tory MP, Mr Alan Clark (65), yesterday won his case in London's High Court against the Evening Standard over a diary column written under his name.

A judge upheld a complaint by the MP for Kensington and Chelsea that the newspaper's weekly feature "Alan Clark's Secret Political Diary" was damaging his reputation as a serious historian and man of letters.

Mr Justice Lightman granted Mr Clark an injunction banning the newspaper from continuing to publish the column without making it clear he is not the author.

The MP had told the judge, at a court hearing before Christmas, he was not trying to stop the newspaper printing parodies of his best-selling diaries.

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His objection was that the Standard failed to make it clear he was not the author of the column, written by and attributed to journalist Peter Bradshaw, but accompanied by a photograph of the MP.

Mr Clark, a political and military historian and frequent newspaper contributor, complained that the Standard column contained place names, dates and locations connected with him. It also referred to his actual movements and activities.

He believed he would suffer economic damage because people might not buy his future books, including the second volume of diaries which he was contracted to prepare.

The Standard's publishers, Associated Newspapers, argued the column was so "whimsical and ludicrous" that ordinary people were not misled and it posed no threat to Mr Clark's reputation.

The judge heard that when Mr Clark asked editor Max Hastings at the Chelsea Flower Show last May to stop publishing the column, Mr Hastings refused and said it was "the most popular thing in the newspaper".

During the court hearing, the Standard's legal team quoted extracts from Mr Clark's genuine published diaries in which he confessed to being attracted by a "red-haired telephone girl", a "plump young lady train passenger who was not wearing a bra" and a Hungarian guest at an embassy reception whose "beautiful nipples showed through her satin blouse".

The newspaper's lawyers suggested the extracts from the real diaries - which sold 60,000 copies in hardback and 150,000 in paperback - were far more salacious than anything published in the Standard. Mr Clark's real reason for bringing the case, it was suggested, was because the newspaper spoofs had injured his "colossal personal vanity".

A spokesman for the Evening Standard said the column would be published tomorrow and entitled "Not Alan Clark's Secret Political Diary".

It will still carry the politician's photograph but with the eyes blacked out.

Lawyers for the newspaper estimated they face legal costs of £250,000 and a damages bill yet to be decided.