Escort girl claims Sheridan orgy

Fiona McGuire, 32, said they were joined by two women and another man as they drank champagne and took cocaine in an Aberdeen hotel room.

However, Ms McGuire admitted this was not what she had originally told the News of the World.

Mr Sheridan has raised a defamation against the Sunday newspaper.

Sexual encounter

The Court of Session in Edinburgh was shown a transcript of a News of the World interview in November 2004.

In this Ms McGuire, a mother-of-three from Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, said her first sexual encounter with the Glasgow MSP was in 2000 and involved champagne, strawberries and just the two of them.

But her evidence to the court painted a very different picture.

Ms McGuire claimed she and Mr Sheridan were joined in the room at the Tree Tops Hotel in Aberdeen by a man and two women she knew through her escort work.

Asked whether drugs were taken during the orgy, she said: "There was cocaine in the room and it was used by everyone."

Private life

Ms McGuire, who revealed she has had between 200 and 300 sexual partners, also said champagne was drunk by the group, which included the teetotal politician.

Graeme Henderson, acting for Mr Sheridan, asked Ms McGuire: "So he was a champagne and cocaine socialist?"

The court also saw an evening newspaper article quoting Mr Sheridan denying Ms McGuire worked for the party, but the jurors were then shown minutes of party meetings which she had attended in the north-east of Scotland.

Earlier, the court heard from a woman who claimed she saw Mr Sheridan having sex with a prostitute at the Moat House Hotel in Glasgow in June 2002.

Former market researcher Helen Allison, 52, told the court she saw Mr Sheridan taking part in three-in-a-bed sex.

Mr Sheridan's lawyer suggested the story started as a joke and an easy way to make money.

Mr Henderson claimed Miss Allison told another man that her friend, Ann Colvin, had suggested that Mr Sheridan might have been at the hotel party.

He said she made the claims after reading stories about Mr Sheridan's private life in the Sunday tabloid.

Miss Allison denied this.

She did agree that she had received £1,000 as an interim payment from the News of the World - who are defending the £200,000 damages action.

The trial continues.