Sign-up supremo 'asked to lie' over wedding

THE Marquesa De Varela, the sign-up supremo of the celebrity magazine world, came close to tears in the witness box yesterday as she described how she was persuaded to lie to save Hello!'s Catherine Zeta Jones wedding edition.

She had told High Court judge Mr Justice Lindsay Hello!'s managing director Javier Riera had asked her to sign untrue statements, later used to lift injunctions barring the sale of the magazine.

"I was very upset and very nervous about the whole idea. But when the magazine you have worked for, for 20 years, asks you to do something, it is very difficult to say I can't do it."

The Marquesa said she now believed Mr Riera had more than one motive in getting her to sign the statement he had been trying to get rid of her as a contributor to Hello!

She was being cross-examined by Michael Tugendhat QC, who represents rival magazine OK!. Hello! is being sued for £1.75 million by OK! because of the alleged damage caused by the paparazzi who gate-crashed Miss Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas's wedding in New York in November 2000.

The Marquesa said she had tried desperately to contact Mr Riera to try to find out why he wanted her to make untrue statements but he did not respond.

"I have never been able to get on with this man. He was really after me from the beginning, arguing on the telephone and criticising me even when I negotiated good deals for

Hello!

"I think that deep down it was not just to lift the injunctions that he did this to me. It was something that he had been planning for a long time. I think he was trying to get rid of me."

He voice cracking up, she said: "I never wanted to get into this. After my divorce, I wanted a quiet life."

The Marquesa and her company Neneta Overseas Ltd, which she claimed bought the paparazzi photographs and sold them to Hello!, are now two of the defendants in the action brought by OK!, which signed a £1 million wedding exclusive deal with the Hollywood couple.