Harsh German suited role -- Mosley
Wednesday July 09 2008
Motorsport boss Max Mosley told the British High Court he spoke German during a sado-masochistic session with five women because the "harsh-sounding" language suited his dominant role.
Mr Mosley revealed that he used the pseudonym 'Mike' to protect his identity, although all the women, who led "perfectly normal and respectable lives", seemed entirely trustworthy.
He said the role-play "prison" scenario, which is at the centre of his breach of privacy action against the News of the World, involved him and woman B, a fellow German speaker, being dominant to submissive characters who could not understand them.
Mr Mosley, the 68-year-old son of the 1930s Fascist leader Oswald Mosley, said this "added to the excitement of a scenario".
"German also somehow sounds appropriate for a bossy dominant character. It is a harsh-sounding language.''
He said that at no time did he or woman A, who arranged the "parties" like the one in a Chelsea basement flat on March 28, ever use the word "Nazi" in their discussions.
"A Nazi theme would be abhorrent to me -- and I suspect that none of the women would wish to take part should anyone suggest such a theme."
Mr Mosley says his life was devastated by the expose of what the newspaper called a "sick Nazi orgy with five hookers" and is asking for an unprecedented award of punitive exemplary damages. He has told Mr Justice Eady that Jean, his wife of 48 years, had not known of this aspect of his life.
His counsel, James Price, has said the "gross and indefensible intrusion" was made substantially worse by the entirely false suggestion that Mr Mosley, president of the FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) was playing a concentration camp commandant and a cowering death camp inmate.
News Group Newspapers is strongly contesting the action and argues that publication was justified in the public interest.
- Jan Colley and Cathy Gordon in London
