Mosley sex games 'were not just Carry On fun,' High Court hears

In his closing speech in the Formula One chief's landmark privacy action, Mark Warby QC, for the News of the World, said Mr Mosley was trying to make out that what the newspaper called a 'sick Nazi orgy' was 'nothing more than hanky-spanky.'

There was talk of 'meetings' or 'parties' and a squeamishness about the use of the word 'brutal.'

Max Mosley: The court heard his sadomasochistic sex session with five prostitutes was 'truly grotesque and depraved'

'There was a general attempt both in the written evidence of the women and in oral evidence to present it as some kind of worthy activity attended by the most strict health and safety precautions as though it was all being carried out under the guidance of the Bondage and Sadomasochism Regulatory Authority.

'It was even compared with Cowboys and Indians, as though it was nothing more than a dressing-up party for grown-ups.

'There was an attempt, we suggest quite deliberately, to turn it all into some kind of farce, or to make it sound like a tremendous giggle.'

But, said the counsel, the newspaper's case was that the events in a Chelsea flat in March were 'truly grotesque and depraved.'

He told Mr Justice Eady: 'If nanny stumbled in on Jason and Flora playing the game you have seen on the videos, she would be more than concerned - appalled - and so would the children and grandchildren of the victims of the Nazis.'

The true picture was very different from what Mr Mosley and his witnesses had tried to depict, and involved 'psychological darkness.'

'There is a form of corruption of the personality and there is, we suggest, true depravity.'

Mr Mosley, the 68-year-old son of the 1930s Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, said his life was devastated by the expose  and is asking for an unprecedented award of punitive exemplary damages.

Mosley with members of his legal team at the High Court Monday

His counsel, James Price QC, said the 'gross and indefensible intrusion' was made substantially worse by the entirely false suggestion that Mr Mosley, president of the FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) was playing a concentration camp commandant and a cowering death camp inmate.

The newspaper's editor, Colin Myler, has said that he believed the story was one of 'legitimate public interest and one that I believe was legitimately published.'

In further comments, Mr Warby said the case involved a 'clash of taboos' - that of peeping in on people having sex as against behaviour, such as the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering for no good reason, which society would consider disgusting.

He said there was no basis for punitive damages, because the newspaper, as Mr Myler and reporter Neville Thurlbeck had said in evidence, honestly believed what was written and that it was legitimate to publish.

'We say that whatever one may think of the merits of their views, we suggest they were patently sincere in what they said about those views.'

There was also a complete failure to put any case of cynical calculation of wrong-doing for financial motives.

Mr Warby asked why, if there was nothing Nazi about the session, Mr Mosley and Woman A were so desperate to try and cover up what went on, such as through the deletion of emails.

He added: 'If it's not meant to be Nazi, then what on earth is it meant to be?'

The role-playing brought to mind the Nazi era rather than a modern German scenario which, he said, would be typified by not crossing the road when the lights were against you or pinching all the sunbeds.

Counsel said that even in a tolerant and broadminded society, there were some things that were fundamentally contrary to western values, such as the brutality of the Nazi era.

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile's membership had a right to expect their elected leader to comply with proper standards, both in his professional and private life.

There was also the fact of Mosley's background, and that he was a committed adherent to his father's party until he was 23.

'I invite you to conclude that what went on in the flat suggests that, just as he has remained committed to an unfortunate interest in S&M, some of the old racist sentiments which he was prepared to endorse also remained with him - and the public are entitled to know that.'

He said that the canings which Mr Mosley received might not be at the top end of S&M activities but did reach the point of criminal wounding.

Mr Mosley's 'unhealthy addiction' was vicious, and the amount of money he devoted to it - £75,000 in one year - was a measure of how much it had taken over his life.

Mr Justice Eady reserved judgement, saying he hoped to deliver his decision next week.

No comments are permitted on this story as legal proceedings are underway