London - Lord Archer's mistress Ms Andrina Colquhoun hid pictures of his wife, forcing staff to play "hunt the photograph" before Lady Archer arrived, the Old Bailey heard yesterday. Ms Angela Peppiatt, the best-selling novelist's former secretary, claimed Lord Archer and his wife "led separate lives" - with his lover running his London apartment. This was despite his 1987 high-profile court libel case in which he was described "to great consequence" as a happily married man.
Lord Archer (61) is accused of dishonesty over the case in which he denied a newspaper report that he had sexual intercourse with a prostitute, while deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, and was awarded £500,000. Ms Peppiatt (56) said her former boss spent most of his time in his London riverside penthouse with Ms Colquhoun. "Jeffrey and Mary led very separate lives other than Jeffrey going home at the weekend. Andy was very much the person in his life at that time in London. Mary came to the flat very, very rarely. In fact, one didn't really see her until Jeffrey became deputy chairman. Then she would come up a bit more for political events where they would appear together."
Ms Peppiatt said sometimes they would have to "play hunt the photograph" before Lady Archer arrived. "If Mary was coming to the apartment, Andrina would have taken all of Mary's photographs. It was a kind of joke. We called it hunt the photograph." She was asked by Lord Archer to buy things for Ms Colquhoun and "six or seven" other girlfriends which he did not want to be seen buying. "He certainly had quite a few women who came to the apartment but Andrina did not know anything about them."