Rope to hang myself
STAR TELLS OF TORMENT
FORMER Blue Peter star John Leslie got so low after “false” sex slurs wrecked his career he planned to hang himself.
He went from being “carefree” to a “suicidal” recluse after being wrongly outed as Ulrika Jonsson’s rapist.
Leslie, 55, told a jury how he was hosting This Morning live when fellow TV star Matthew Wright named him as the Gladiators star’s attacker on a rival channel. He said it was the
“end of my career”. Leslie said he knew he was innocent.
He dated Ulrika for several months when they were rising stars and they split “amicably”.
In her 2002 autobiography she revealed she was raped by an un- named presenter. Wright wrongly said it was Leslie.
The Scot begged Ulrika to state publicly that he was not her attacker. But he claimed she told him via lawyers: “I’m not going to name the person. I never will and that’s it.”
At Southwark Crown Court, where he denies an allegation of sexual assault in a West End bar in 2008, Leslie asked the jury: “How can you do that?”
Wright later admitted his error and apologised, but Leslie said it started a witch- hunt which led to him being wrongly portrayed as a “crazed sexual monster”. He said he was talked out of suing by his agent as it would wreck any chance of saving his career.
But when other women came forward with “false allegations”, he lost everything.
Leslie said: “I got to the point of a tree and a rope in the park.”
He said he only changed his mind because he said it would have meant his accusers had won. The trial continues.