BRITAIN: Court 13 at the Royal Courts of Justice has witnessed many polished performances. No sooner had former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds crossed swords with the Sunday Times within its wood-panelled walls than Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed did battle with former Tory minister Neil Hamilton during their notorious libel case.
It was "supermodel" Naomi Campbell's turn to swear "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" this week. And she proved as feisty an opponent for the be-wigged QCs as her political predecessors.
When Mr Justice Morland swept into court yesterday, Ms Campbell took her seat in the witness box, determinedly looking straight ahead from under a long, glossy fringe. If she was trying to avoid looking at Mr Desmond Browne, QC, for Mirror Group Newspapers, who she is suing for breach of confidence, invasion of privacy and breach of the Data Protection Act, because it published pictures of her leaving a drugs counselling session, she succeeded. Apart from the odd withering look directed at Mr Browne, the entire cross-examination was conducted with the model looking at the press bench and the QC facing the judge.
As Mirror editor Piers Morgan looked on, the battling Mr Browne repeatedly pressed the 31-year-old model about telling a "whopper". She had said in a television interview that her grandmother "wasn't too thrilled seeing me with my clothes off frolicking around" in Madonna's Sex coffee table book, Mr Browne reminded her.
"You can't have been surprised about your family being upset?" he asked. But Ms Campbell snapped back: "I am an adult and I've been modelling since I was 15. I choose to do what I please . . . my grandmother doesn't tell me what to do."
Three young women who mistakenly sat on the court bench reserved for solicitors were only concerned about getting a better look.
"Could you move that box; we can only see the top of her head?" one of them asked.
And a man at the back of the court said: "I usually sit in on some of the cases. She's a bit aggressive isn't she?"
Under further cross-examination Ms Campbell appealed against being "put on a pedestal, because I am going to fall".
She alleged the Mirror had threatened "to make my life hell" if she did not co-operate over the photographs. After wiping away a few tears the ordeal was over and it was Mr Morgan's turn in the witness box. In a cutting remark about the model, who had "voraciously invaded her own privacy" as a jet-setting celebrity, Mr Morgan said of Ms Campbell: "If you are voluntarily going into Hannibal Lecter's cage, then eventually you are going to be nibbled around the back of the neck."