Ken Clarke: Eh?

A man who claimed he was sexually assaulted by former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke has been cleared of perverting the course of justice.

Ben Fellows, 40, of Solihull, in the West Midlands, had said the Conservative MP abused him in 1994.

In the trial at the Old Bailey Mr Clarke - the MP for Rushcliffe - described the claims as "preposterous".

The jury took eight hours to find Mr Fellows, of Redstone Farm Road, Olton, not guilty of the charge.

During the trial, the court heard that in 2012 Mr Fellows told national news reporters Mr Clarke had assaulted him in the office of a political lobbyist during a cash-for-questions sting by ITV's The Cook Report.

Mr Clarke said he had never in his life "had the compulsion" to grope another man as he dismissed the claim as "off the Richter scale" and "like Martians landing".

The court heard Mr Fellows had made a statement to officers from a high-profile investigation into Westminster historical child sex abuse.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said: "The defendant said that in 1994, when he was 19 years old, he had been employed as an undercover actor by an investigative journalism programme on ITV, the Cook Report, during a sting operation.

"The defendant said in a witness statement that whilst engaged in that capacity, he had been sexually assaulted [by] Kenneth Clarke MP."

When officers checked out Mr Fellows' version of events, they concluded they were false and began treating him as a suspect rather than a victim...

Mr Fellows was described in court as "an inventive and sometimes persuasive fantasist"...

BBC News.

Fagburn does not understand any of this.

Anyone?