Noel Clarke secretly sent a friend “full frontal” naked photographs of a woman he had sex with after they met when she was doing work experience on a film set, the high court has heard.
Davie Fairbanks, who was the best man at the former Doctor Who star’s wedding but later fell out with him, claimed in a witness statement that he had received the photographs of the woman, named as Ivy, without warning.
“Noel took photos of Ivy in the hotel room when they slept together. Shortly afterwards he showed me a photo and sent it to me by email,” said Fairbanks, who was appearing as a witness in Guardian News and Media’s defence to Clarke’s libel claim against the publisher.
“The photo showed her standing up, with full frontal nudity, looking at the camera. He asked me to save the photo and to put it into a new email to send back to him straight away, and to then delete the original email. This was so he could keep the photo but it would look as though I had sent it.”
Clarke, 49, who is suing the Guardian over publications from 2021-22 accusing him of sexual misconduct, has denied taking nude images without the consent of Ivy, with whom he had a two-month relationship, adding that “any photographs taken in an intimate setting were taken with consent and kept privately”.
Also appearing as a witness in GNM’s defence, Ivy said he had encouraged her to send him nude photographs but that she had “expressly told him that he should not show them to anyone – I recall including messages to say that he should keep them private when I sent them. I believed that he would respect that.”
Ivy told the court she had later been “horrified” to hear in around 2016 or 2017 that Clarke had shown these “selfies” to a mutual friend as proof that he had slept with her.
Clarke’s barrister, Philip Williams, said there was no evidence that any photographs had been shared or shown by the actor. But on the eve of Fairbanks giving evidence at the high court, the court heard he had found a cache of 15 pictures on his hard drive.
Ivy was asked by Gavin Millar KC, acting for the Guardian, whether she had ever seen these photographs before being provided with them the previous night by solicitors acting for the newspaper. She told the court she had not. She added that they were also not the pictures she had taken on her phone for Clarke.
Asked by Clarke’s barrister why she had stayed in contact with Clarke, sending messages with “kisses and lovehearts”, after hearing that he had shown a friend a naked photograph of her, Ivy said she was concerned that he had “leverage” over her.
She said: “Just because I didn’t vocally fall out with him, it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose respect for him a long time ago.
“I trusted him in a relationship, I trusted him with my personal life, and he disrespected that trust by showing pictures of me to other people without my consent.”
Clarke is expected to return to the witness box to explain the presence of the photographs in Fairbanks’ possession.
Addressing the judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, Clarke’s barrister questioned why the photographs had emerged on the eve of Fairbanks’ evidence, describing it as an “ambush” and accusing the witness of seeking to pervert the course of justice.
Fairbanks claimed in his witness statement that Clarke had secretly filmed female actors who had been asked to strip while auditioning for a film called Legacy.
“He did it in a way that the actors wouldn’t have noticed,” Fairbanks claimed. “There was plenty of time in between auditions to do this … While in the room, I told Noel he shouldn’t do what he was doing. He batted away my comment and just told me to shut up.”
Clarke’s barrister accused Fairbanks of lying. The court has previously heard from a female actor who Fairbanks claimed had been groped by Clarke that the incident did not happen.
Earlier in the proceedings on Friday, evidence was heard from Leanne Coldwell, also a witness for GNM. She claimed Clarke had told students that he wanted to challenge them during an acting course for novices and amateurs at the London School of Dramatic Art (LSDA) and that he had “suggested undressing or being naked” during a scene.
“Sometime after the August 2012 session, maybe a week or a few weeks later, one of the LSDA tutors, Richard, told the class that Noel’s request in that class was wrong and would not happen again,” she said in her witness statement. “Richard said that auditions in the industry would not be run in the way Noel had purported. He was furious.”
Clarke’s barrister said this was not true and that Coldwell’s own evidence suggested the students could make their own decisions about what to do. Coldwell said she stood by her statement.
In Clarke’s defence, he has said he “never received any other complaints from LSDA” which “continued to encourage me to run workshops and classes for the school for many years after the purported allegations”.
The trial will continue on Monday.
