Rape case lawyer is back in court

Former solicitor Angus Diggle, once jailed for the attempted rape of a woman colleague, drunkenly abused police officers in a town's red light district, a court heard yesterday.

The 39-year-old Diggle was fined pounds 75 with pounds 125 costs after being found guilty by magistrates in Bolton, Greater Manchester, of drunk and disorderly behaviour.

Diggle, who was given two years jail in 1993 for the attempted rape after he had taken the 25-year-old female lawyer to a Highland Ball in a London hotel, had berated two officers about the criminal justice system and called them "filthy slime", the magistrates heard.

One of the officers, Sergeant Ian Campbell, said that when he warned Diggle, of Bolton, to go home during the incident on a Sunday afternoon last November, he replied: "Do you know who I am? I'm a famous person."

Sgt Campbell said after Diggle ignored repeated warnings he was arrested and had to be handcuffed after a "sort of wrestling match". He added that Diggle had refused to supply details about himself and remained "argumentative and uncooperative" even when taken to the police station.

Diggle denied he had been drunk but said he was "very tired and rather emotional". He said he had four or five glasses of wine with his Sunday lunch and was walking to the railway station when he saw two women and a man being interviewed by police. He said because he had had a statement deliberately falsified against him in a trial, he was worried about the women.

"I thought if they were in trouble, and I had not seen ladies in trouble with police before, I must go over and tell them to see a solicitor as soon as they could," he said.

Diggle, who served one year of his two-year sentence reduced from an original three years on appeal, was suspended from professional practice after his conviction and has not reapplied to start practising as a solicitor again.