Casual remark in 30-second call leads to action

It was a throwaway remark in a 30-second phone call in 1996. The then Fianna Fáil press officer, Mandy Johnston, joked that, like another Mandy before her, she might bring down a government.

The Star's political correspondent, who was on the other end of the phone, picked up the idea and ran with it.

Eight paragraphs and almost eight years later, his story was being parsed and analysed yesterday by some of the country's best lawyers. Ms Johnston - now the Government press secretary - claimed it had implied she had the morals of Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler, the call girls at the centre of Britain's 1964 Profumo affair.

The plaintiff apart, there were no political figures in the courtroom, and only a build-up of journalists during the day suggested the case was of unusual interest. Except for the two protagonists, there were no witnesses either.

John Donlon, now political editor of the Sunday World, told the court he and Ms Johnston were both from Longford, and he he had been pleased to see a "Longford lass" doing well. The story was an attempt to boost her profile, and the Profumo joke was a "hook" on which to hang it. Ms Johnston saw it differently.

During a tough cross-examination by Mr Kevin Feeney SC, she insisted the story, in which her photograph was juxtaposed with the iconic picture of a naked Christine Keeler straddling a chair, had implied that she too would use "sexual shenanigans" to bring down the Government.

The hearing is set to be one of the shortest in libel history.

The jury will return on Tuesday to hear summaries and deliver a verdict.