Badgered by Benjy
From Mr David Leigh Sir: Mr Justin Rushbrooke has a go at the Guardian (We've bin robbed', 3 March) in a way that makes me think he should stick to his own trade of trying to separate libel litigants from their money. This is not merely because his lengthy article about Benjy the Binman was boring and pompous, but because he has completely got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Everybody of any consequence in Fleet Street has been badgered by Benjy the Binman for years. He rings all of us up, all the time, and deluges us with astonishing stories and faxes. The tales he tells are often entertaining, and occasionally involve information which people ought to know. Benjy has received thousands of pounds in regular fees from many broadsheets and tabloids.
But actually, not the Guardian. I didn't pay him .€100 (or any other sum). I didn't buy material from him about Aitken. I didn't encourage him to go through the bins of Neil Hamilton's lawyers. He did it all by himself.
Rushbrooke seems upset that Lord Phillips — like me — chortled about Benjy when his antics came to court recently. Perhaps this was because the Neil Hamilton appeal judge recognised that lawyers who charge their clients through the nose for putting their crooked secrets out with the rubbish where anyone can find them should be the last people to accuse the newspapers, as Rushbrooke does, of being 'lazy and corrupt'.
David Leigh
The Guardian, London EC I
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