A SECRET video recording purporting to show Tommy Sheridan confessing to attending a swingers’ club is to be handed to detectives investigating allegations of perjury.

Two months after the socialist politician won libel damages of £200,000 from the News of the World over claims that he took part in orgies, fresh questions were raised about his courtroom victory yesterday when the newspaper published the transcript of a conversation in which he appears to admit to the allegations.

According to the transcript, said to be of a 40-minute meeting between Mr Sheridan and George McNeilage, the best man at his wedding in 2000, Mr Sheridan appears to admit attending Cupid’s sex club in Manchester on two occasions, something he denied in court.

Referring to a meeting specifically called to discuss his sex life, the tape appears to show Mr Sheridan saying that Alan McCombes, a senior member of the Scottish Socialist Party, asked him whether he had visited the sex club.

Mr Sheridan appears to say: “And Alan pulled me up about it. And I said to him, ‘Look, stupid, I shouldnae have done it. Done it once before back in ’96 and went back in 2002. A cheap thrill but it’s been done and that’s it’.”

The recording, which was heard by thousands of Scots yesterday on a telephone hotline set up by the tabloid, will intensify pressure on police to launch an official perjury investigation.

It suggests a starkly different picture to that portrayed by Mr Sheridan during his five-week trial, when he repeatedly broke down in tears, said that his only weakness was for a game of Scrabble and professed his undying love for his wife, Gail.

Mr Sheridan, who represented himself during the trial and described his triumph as the equivalent of Gretna Football Club beating Real Madrid, faces the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence if found guilty of lying under oath.

Yesterday he was compared by the News of the World to the disgraced former Tory MPs Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer, while colleagues who testified against him during the court case said it was time that he told the truth.

However, in an angry statement, Mr Sheridan, whose face is not visible on the videotape, accused the newspaper of fabricating the recording. He said: “They have a former friend whom I haven’t spoken to for two years tell lies about me. A fictitious tape has been invented, concocted and unleashed on a Scottish public sick to the back teeth of the News of the World’s constant lies.”

Police said that they had yet to receive the recording, but the newspaper said that it expected to hand it to detectives within the next few days.

Bob Bird, the Editor of the Scottish edition of the newspaper, said that it had paid an undisclosed sum for the recording and added: “Tommy Sheridan undoubtedly told the truth to his friend George McNeilage and it was the exact opposite of what he said in court. We are now waiting to hear back from the police.”

The Crown Office said that it was reviewing the testimony of all those who gave evidence at the trial before deciding whether to ask police to proceed with a perjury investigation.

A spokesman for the Crown Office said last night: “We’ve not seen it (the tape) and we would ask them to hand it over to Lothian and Borders Police and it will be taken from there.”

The News of the World said last night that it was “100 per cent” certain that the man on the tape was Mr Sheridan, adding that its view had been confirmed by voice experts.

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