In an odd exchange of roles, a jury at the Old Bailey was asked today to accept the all-too-human failings of two judges who got caught in an intimate web of blackmail with a Brazilian cleaner.

Summing up the case against Roselane Driza, a 37-year-old cleaner who is accused of blackmailing two unnamed immigration judges, one man known as I, and a woman known as J, with sex videos, David Markham, prosecuting, said neither judge was proud of their actions.

After a week of evidence replete with colourful language — the court has already heard how judge I described Ms Driza as "chilli hot stuff" — Mr Markham concluded his presentation to the jury with a plea to see the common humanity in the judiciary: "Blackmail develops and thrives where there is human vulnerability and weakness. It does not flourish among angels and saints," he told the court.

"It takes root where flesh and blood people — including judges — decidedly fall from grace and err.

"This allegation is not an appeal for sympathy for J and I. Each of them, you may think, got themselves into the very uncomfortable situations with the defendant. Each, with more care, might have avoided more lurid scenarios... each of them became prey to blackmail."

"The phrase ‘chilli hot stuff’ will resonate in [judge I's] mind for many years if not ever more," he said.

The court has heard how judges J and I lived together as lovers before ending their relationship and remaining as friends. Ms Driza was first employed by judge J, who fired her, before moving in with judge I and starting an affair that reduced the 60-year-old judge to a state of worship.

"With a passion that a man many years younger might have been proud of, [judge I] became, in his words, a complete and total puppy of the defendant," Mr Markham said today, observing that the judge "made a fool of himself" when he refused to listen to the advice of his former lover, J.

According to the prosecution, judge I's relationship with Ms Driza eventually soured and he asked her to leave, the cleaner discovered two videos, one showing the two judges having sex and taking cocaine and a second video showing judge I with another woman.

She demanded £20,000 in compensation for what she called her racist treatment at the hands of judge J. Ms Driza was paid £5 an hour as a cleaner.

"These tapes were, or for all we know are, dynamite. A 60-year-old judge romping with two women and a suggestion of cocaine," said Mr Markham.

Today Ms Driza, of north London, denied again that she had kept the videos to blackmail the two judges: "I did not have it to blackmail them. I had no reason to," she told the court. The case continues.

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