Star demands £2.2m from Archer

Star editor Peter Hill: "Archer owes us £2.2m"

The Daily Star newspaper has begun legal proceedings to get back the £500,000 damages wrongly won from it by Jeffrey Archer in his 1987 libel case.

Editor Peter Hill said that, with court costs and interest, the amount Archer owed the paper now equalled £2.2m.

He's spent his life telling lies, he's actually ruined people's lives - did he care about them? No

Daily Star editor Peter Hill

He told a news conference: "We hope that Archer will pay of his own volition, but knowing what I do know of Archer I doubt if he will and there probably will have to be another court case."

Archer was awarded the money when he sued the newspaper for libel for claiming he had paid £2,000 to prostitute Monica Coghlan.

But on Thursday he was jailed for four years after a jury ruled that he had lied in the trial.

Mr Hill said he was "delighted" by the verdict, which vindicated the newspaper and its staff.

The then editor Lloyd Turner was sacked after the trial, and Mr Hill claimed he had died early as a result of the stress from the case.

He is a proven liar, a cheat and a chancer, a man so arrogant that he thought he was above the law. Now finally he has got what he deserved

Peter Hill on Jeffrey Archer

Mr Hill said of Mr Turner: "I feel very sad for him that he can't be around today to see that justice has been done. It's a great shame."

He said he felt no sympathy for Archer.

"He is a proven liar, a cheat and a chancer, a man so arrogant that he thought he was above the law. Now finally he has got what he deserved.

"He's spent his life telling lies, he's actually ruined people's lives - did he care about them? No."

Journalism 'vindicated'

Mr Hill said he felt the Daily Star, and British journalism in general, had been vindicated by the verdict.

"British newspapers do have an enormously important role in British society to tell the truth about people who do not want the truth to be told," he said.

The News of the World newspaper also welcomed the verdict as vindicating it and other newspapers.

Archer: Caught by the News of the World

The peer's perjury came to light after the News of the World published reports in 1999 that he and his friend Ted Francis had fabricated alibis to protect him.

Managing editor Stuart Kuttner said: "Our thorough journalism has been fully vindicated by the jury's verdict.

"We note that Lord Archer was convicted on all the offences and deceit that we revealed in the newspaper on 21 November and the following Sunday 28 November 1999.

"Further, we are delighted that Ted Francis who was drawn into the affair as part of Lord Archer's plot to mislead a jury and fool a judge in the High Court has rightly been exonerated."