Mr Neil Hamilton's High Court libel action against Mr Mohamed Al Fayed was yesterday described as "totally worthless, impertinent and misconceived".
Mr George Carman QC, for the Harrods owner, said the former Conservative MP for Tatton was a "desperate man with a desperate claim".
He told Mr Justice Morland and a jury: "We shall say and prove in this court that Mr Hamilton was a greedy and somewhat unscrupulous politician at the time who was on the make and on the take."
By the time of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, in January, 1997, in which Mr Al Fayed alleged that Mr Hamilton had corruptly demanded and accepted cash payments, gift vouchers and a free holiday at the Paris Ritz, the MP already had a "bad reputation" for exploiting his position, said Mr Carman. Mr Hamilton's name "was linked forever with the word `sleaze' ".
But Mr Desmond Browne QC, for Mr Hamilton, said Mr Fayed - as he called him - was a "phoney Pharaoh" who would be buried by the sheer bulk of his lies.
"Mr Fayed, we say, is a classic Jekyll and Hyde figure - a man with a jovial side, a man with a thoroughly evil side."
He went on: "But when one strips away the superficial joviality, you find a deeply dishonest man with an evil penchant for the vindictive pursuit of those who have fallen foul of him."
He said that it was the failure of Mr Fayed's action against the British government in the European courts over the critical Department of Trade and Industry report into his purchase of Harrods that "triggered" his vengeance on the two men he held responsible - the former home secretary, Mr Michael Howard, and Mr Hamilton, then a junior DTI minister.
The case was adjourned until this morning when Mr Al Fayed is due to take the witness stand.