“the producer told me that years before when he was an assistant editor in a cutting room in Wardour Street he used to get his holiday photos developed at a shop in Wardour Street and one day the shop was raided by the police because the owner was dealing in pornography or at least that was the presumed reason. During the raid, a distribution list was discovered which had Ted Heath’s name on it also Patrick Moore’s and it was for “kiddie porn” as it was termed in those days. I do not know how he got this information about the list but apparently “everyone in Wardour Street” knew about it.”

An accused man’s claim that he was framed by the authorities because he had discovered pornographic photographs of his lover, naked, In poses with Mr Edward Heath, the former Prime Minister, and a detective sergeant, were “wild and totally unfounded” the prosecution maintained at the Central Criminal Court yesterday. Mr Stephen Mlitchell, for the Crown, told a jury of seven women and five men that the allegations of the existence of such photographs had been made last October at the man’s first trial which was halted after three weeks and a new trial ordered. The defendant, aged 37, has pleaded not guilty to charges of raping and assaulting his former mistress, aged 32, a mother of three daughters. The defendant claimed he had discovered five colour photographs in the jewel box of the woman with whom he lived at their flat in 1976, while they were living at Woolwich, south east London. Their young daughters were looking on allegedly as the woman posed on her bed. Mr Heath was said to have been in two of the photographs, and the detective Sergeant, Brian Wallace, in three of them. But, Mr Mitchell said, no such photographs existed,although the jury would probably spent a great deal of time listening to comments about them. The defendant also claimed that he had found a black briefcase, bearing an MP’s initials, in a cupboard at his former lover’s flat. Some photographs did exist, Mr Mitchell said. The woman remembered that she had once posed nude and semi-nude. But the existence of “the odd dirty photo” whould not have any great influence on the case, he said. The man was accused of threatening his former lover with a knife and a hammer after breaking into her home in September 1982, and raping and assaulting her. He was also accused of assaulting her in June of that year. The hearing continues.