Mosley defends his right to enjoy S&M

The disgraced motorsport boss Max Mosley, appearing in the High Court on Monday to sue the News of the World for damages, admitted a 45-year involvement in sado-masochism, but denied the newspaper's claims that the episode with five call-girls they clandestinely filmed in March was a "sick Nazi orgy". Mosley admitted that his wife and children knew nothing about this side of his life but maintained that it was a "perfectly harmless"
activity and there was no public interest in reporting it. He could think of "few things more unerotic than Nazi roleplay".

Mosley, whose presidency of Formula One's governing body, the FIA, has been under a cloud ever since the expose, is the son of the pre-war British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. He claimed that carrying his father's name had clouded his life. His QC, James Price, said: "The sins of the father cannot justifiably be visited upon the son, who was born at a time when the British Union of Fascists was simply a memory and when Britain was already at war with Nazi Germany."

Price, defending his client's right to enjoy S&M, accused the News of the World of being out of touch with modern life. "It's not a surprise to me or to others who don't live in an ivory tower or a monastery, or, I am sure, to your lordship," he said, turning to the judge, Mr Justice Eady, "to learn that quite a lot of people, men and women, have a fascinated interest in this sort of thing."

Price said there was no evidence that the roleplays filmed by the News of the World, and seen by millions on the paper's website, had any Nazi overtones. He showed Judge Eady pictures of prisoners interned in Belsen concentration camp, to demonstrate the differences between their uniforms and those worn during Mosley's sex session.

Mark Warby QC, representing the News of the World, asked why in one of the filmed scenes, conducted mostly in German, one of the women being "punished" could clearly be heard protesting "but we are the Aryan race, the blondes". Mosley said it must have been a "throwaway line" which he had not heard at the time.

The News of the World's defence is that there were Nazi elements to the sex session; that Mosley's key position in a popular world sport meant he had a responsibility to behave himself; and that there was an element of criminality, because in one scene Mosley bled after being caned, and such an act of violence was illegal.

Mosley scoffed at this, saying the pain was pleasurable. "I would far rather do that," he said, "than, for example, jump into a cold swimming pool."