pounds 20,000 `Dirty Tricks' libel victory for the man they call The Streetfighter

PR consultant wins libel damages over journalist's book on the bitter war between British Airways and Virgin Atlantic

Public-relations consultant Brian Basham yesterday won pounds 20,000 libel damages plus costs over a book on the bitter war between British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, which he said depicted him as a "professional liar".

A High Court jury unanimously agreed that the book Dirty Tricks, written by the television journalist Martyn Gregory, wrongly portrayed Mr Basham as a "peddlar" of untruths at the centre of the "dirty tricks" campaign against Virgin.

For a butcher's son from South London, a man who is known in his trade as The Streetfighter and who has a long list of big-name former or current clients - including Lord Hanson, Mohamed Al Fayed, Robert Maxwell and the President of Malawi - it was one of his most satisfying victories to date.

Mr Basham, who rose to prominence in the yuppie Eighties as a master exponent of what he called pro-active PR - and what critics dubbed "negative PR" - admitted the allegations had hung over him "like a cloud".

Mr Justice Ian Kennedy awarded costs - estimated at pounds 400,000 - against Mr Gregory and publishers Little, Brown, and the verdict now raises the possibility of more legal actions against the book by BA and its associates. Lawyers acting for BA were in court throughout the case, as were solicitors acting for Marks & Spencer, which has issued a writ against a television programme Mr Gregory made for World In Action on child labour in Morocco.

The publishers were also ordered to stop any further distribution of Dirty Tricks.

After the four-week, sometimes acrimonious hearing, Mr Basham, 52, who runs his own public relations company, Warwick Corporate, said he was "delighted" to have cleared his name. "A penny damages would have satisfied me," he said.

Mr Basham also revealed that he is considering reporting the defence barrister Ronald Thwaites QC to the Bar Council for his "outrageous" attack on him during closing speeches, in which the PR man was described variously as "wicked", "evasive", "slippery" and a perjurer.

"It was a complete abuse of privilege, almost more than flesh can bear," said Mr Basham.

The PR consultant, who was sacked by British Airways after being "thrown to the wolves" over the Virgin affair, is also to write a book about his experiences, provisionally entitled Dicky Business - a phrase which cropped up, ironically, in Dirty Tricks.

Discussions with Hollywood film producers to turn Dirty Tricks into a movie - with suggestions that Kevin Costner should play the Branson role - are now likely to be shelved.

Mr Gregory, an award-winning documentary maker, was visibly upset after the verdict. "It's a very, very sad day for investigative journalism - and the British establishment has once again gathered around one of its own."

He said they were considering an appeal which he was "confident" would be successful. They had denied the libel, pleading justification.

The decision by the jury that, in effect, Mr Basham had not engaged in dirty tricks, raises new questions about the BA/Virgin battle, which culminated in January 1993 when BA paid Mr Branson and its rival airline a total of pounds 610,000 in libel damages and up to pounds 4.5m costs. At the time Mr Basham was named in a court statement and, in his words, was made a scapegoat for the company's actions against Virgin.

One experienced observer of the saga said: "If Mr Basham was not involved in dirty tricks, as the verdict says, then who was?"

The case has its origins in the late Eighties, against a backdrop of rising concern, if not paranoia, in BA about Virgin Atlantic and Richard Branson, the man they dubbed "the grinning pullover", and his ability to make serious inroads into their business.

Mr Basham, who had been retained by British Airways as a consultant from 1985, was said in Dirty Tricks to have played a central role in the campaign, by spreading rumours to journalists about supposed shortcomings in Mr Branson's airline and his other businesses, in an apparent bid to deter investors.

There were three main areas of contention in the case; first, the compilation of a report by Mr Basham on the Virgin chief and his companies in 1991, pointing out among other matters that Mr Branson's association with the gay nightclub Heaven was risky for a man seeking investors. The report was then leaked to selected journalists. There followed two meetings with journalists, one with Chris Hutchins, a gossip columnist on the now defunct Today, the other with Nick Rufford of the Sunday Times.

He was taped telling Mr Hutchins about rumours of infected needles found in bins outside the nightclub and the apparent availability of drugs there, and about how he would not let his wife fly Virgin Atlantic - implying safety concerns. He also told Mr Rufford of other rumours that Mr Branson was forced to pay cash in advance for his airline's fuel.

Mr Thwaites told the court that in describing these matters, the book had not "wronged" Mr Basham but had "exposed" him. Though it had not accused the PR consultant of lying, it had suggested that he passed on stories about Virgin not knowing if they were true.

But the jury accepted the claim made by Mr Patrick Milmo QC, for Mr Basham, that the account was "one-sided, partial, embroidered and distorted", and in effect portrayed Mr Basham as a "peddlar of lies." The Branson report - called Operation Barbara - had been fair and balanced, Mr Milmo said, and his client had been "set up" by at least one of the journalists, whom he had urged to check the stories independently.

His client could ignore most insults, but "not the accusation that he was a professional liar," added Mr Milmo.

Mr Basham said in court:"I would very happily sacrifice my contract rather than spread stories which I did not believe to be true."

The defence did not seek to justify claims made in the book that Mr Basham had helped alter Mr Al Fayed's family history during his bid to take over the Knightsbridge store, Harrods.

As well as running Warwick Corporate, Mr Basham, who is twice-married, runs a private company providing health care for the elderly. His work for the Royal British Legion, much of it unpaid, recently received an award for encouraging the return of the two-minute silencelast year.

Mr Basham began his career in newspapers as as a copy boy on the Daily Mail and later worked on the Times before moving into business PR in the Seventies, where he quickly established a reputation for being a clear- headed, tough operator, equally at home with financial figures, business and - crucially - journalists. He helped to build up Broadstreet Associates, a powerful Eighties PR consultancy before selling out and creating Warwick.

At the peak of his career he combined an image of ruthlessness and hard work with glamourous living and expensive cars. Despite himself describing the public relations business as "tawdry" - with irony, he insists - and hearing his like called "shabby" by Mr Thwaites, Mr Basham is in no doubt of the value of his trade.

"Nowadays, neither newspapers nor brokers and fund managers could function without the input of the PR industry," he said.