Max Mosley says orgies will continue

Max Mosley, the head of Formula One, whose taste for S&M became public this summer when he successfully sued the News of the World for invasion of privacy, has told the Guardian that he has no intention of curtailing his enthusiasm for sado-masochistic practices, despite acknowledging it exposes himself and his family to ridicule.

Said Mosley: "You will never completely lose interest in that sort of thing. You just don't, to be very honest. I've been doing it for 45 years. I've been extremely careful, I'd never got caught. To anyone who's not into it, it's an absurd activity. Like, for example, being a transvestite is absurd to anybody who's not into it. Therefore if you are into it you keep it secret from people who are not into it."

Mosley won £60,000 damages in the landmark privacy action, after the News of the World was judged to have implied wrongly that a sex party he enjoyed with five call-girls – which he did not deny – had Nazi overtones, which he did deny. He now acknowledges that his wife of 45 years, Jean, was devastated by the expose. He said: "I mean, it's just very difficult for my wife, it's very difficult for my sons. But we're all each other have got."

In Formula One circles, he said he had introduced a rule that people are allowed three jokes, and no more. "Sex is funny,” he admits. “Most people's sex lives, if you had the whole detail, would be quite funny. That's the point - why you don't have the detail - because it's not right to laugh at people in that way. It's an absurd thing to do, looked at in any rational way. But sex is absurd - it is a very strange, completely animal thing that's not fully understood.”

Mosley also spoke to the Guardian about his parents, Sir Oswald Mosley, the 1930's leader of British Union of Fascists, and Diana Mosley, nee Mitford, and their attitude to the Nazi leaders of the time. He said: "My mother really liked Hitler. And my father didn't, for what reasons I don't really know. My father quite liked Mussolini but thought he was a bit over the top."