A LEADING Scottish politician attended a swingers’ club and asked to be spanked with red PVC gloves, a court was told yesterday.

Tommy Sheridan, the former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), was then said to have asked party colleagues to lie about his behaviour by backing his public denial of newspaper allegations against him.

Lawyers for the News of the World said that Mr Sheridan, 42, a member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow, was a “hypocrite” who took part in sex orgies and cheated on his wife.

Mr Sheridan is suing News Group Newspapers (a subsidiary of News International), publisher of the News of the World, over articles about his private life published in November 2004 when his wife was expecting their first child.

On the opening day of the libel action at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, where Mr Sheridan is seeking up to £200,000 in damages, Alistair Clark, counsel for the News of the World, said that Mr Sheridan attended a swingers’ club in Manchester and a Glasgow hotel where he took part in group sex. Mr Clark added: “The evidence which will be led is that . . . Mr Sheridan was seen having sex with a woman — not his wife — in a bedroom while another man was also present in the room.”

Mr Sheridan denies visiting a Manchester swingers’ club called Cupid’s or being unfaithful to his wife. Counsel for the News of the World said that the newspaper intended to prove that allegations that Mr Sheridan took part in orgies, was a hypocrite and abused his position of power were “substantially true”.

Jurors were told by a clerk to the court that they must decide whether the MSP had committed adultery with two women, named as Fiona McGuire and Anvar Khan, and other unnamed individuals. Mr Sheridan, who quit as leader of the SSP days after the swingers’ club story was published, was said to have lied about his reasons for standing down.

Allison Kane, 38, national treasurer of the SSP, said that Mr Sheridan had admitted visiting the swingers’ club but had asked party colleagues at a meeting to back his public denial because there was no proof that he had attended the club.

Asked by Mr Sheridan’s counsel, Richard Keen, QC, why six other SSP members had a different recollection of what had happened, Ms Kane insisted that her version was true. She also denied that there was a “cabal” in the party seeking to oust Mr Sheridan as leader.

The case continues.

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