Disgraced tycoon wins appeal right

The disgraced tycoon Owen Oyston yesterday won permission to appeal against convictions for rape and indecent assault that led to a six-year jail sentence.

Lawyers acting for the 64-year-old former Blackpool Football Club chairman also persuaded three judges to allow them to produce fresh evidence to show his victim was "very free with her sexual favours - not vulnerable and innocent". Oyston was sentenced a year ago at Liverpool Crown Court for the offences committed against a former model when she was 16. The girl, known as Miss B, said she had been forced to have oral sex with him, was made to watch him have sex with another woman, and was then ordered to undress and join them. The fresh evidence included that of a holiday romance at a time when Miss B, who is suing Oyston for at least pounds 500,000, said she had gone off sex and men because of the trauma of the alleged rape.