Archer 'ditched mistress for his career'

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Archer dumped me for Tory post, says ex-lover

Jeffrey Archer's former personal assistant admitted for the first time in public yesterday that she was his mistress for five years.

But, she said, the peer ended the affair when seeking a senior post in the Conservative Party. "He thought it would be better if he tidied up his personal life," Andrina Colquhoun told the Old Bailey. "I was upset."

The court was told that Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare had been told by Margaret Thatcher and Mary Archer to "give up" Ms Colquhoun, but he had not done so despite his assurances to the contrary. Ms Colquhoun stopped working for Lord Archer at the time he ended their affair. But she said they continued to see each other after he became Tory deputy chairman, and kept in touch when he was selected as the party's candidate for Mayor of London.

Ms Colquhoun told the jury that she was "horrified" when, in 1999, Lord Archer telephoned her to say she was being linked to an allegedly false alibi for his victorious libel trial 12 years ago.

Yesterday Ms Colquhoun categorically denied she was dining with Lord Archer in the Sambuca restaurant in London on a night when he had been accused of having sex with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan.

Ms Colquhoun, 48, produced diaries and her passport to prove that she was in the Greek island of Skiathos at the time with Robert Waddington, the man she was to marry later. She said that, in any event, by 1986 Lord Archer wanted to keep the relationship secret "much more secret than prior to 1984. We stopped going out to public restaurants."

Ted Francis, a former friend of Lord Archer, is charged with providing a false alibi for the 1987 libel trial in which Lord Archer won £500,000 from the Daily Star. Lord Archer, it is alleged, pretended he wanted Mr Francis to cover up for him because he was dining that night with Ms Colquhoun. Mr Francis, in interviews with the police, said Lord Archer, 61, had told him Mrs Thatcher and Mary Archer had pressed him to end the relationship with Ms Colquhoun. "He said he told them he had but he hadn't," Mr Francis said.