Rebekah Brooks's husband has denied that he had "settled on drunkenness" as a cover story for concealing bags containing computers with News International tags in an underground car park the day she was arrested.
Charlie Brooks has told the Old Bailey phone-hacking trial on Monday that the bags should have been returned to him at his Chelsea home on the same night and because of a "cock up" with a friend who was keeping him company they were left behind the bins in the car park and found by a cleaner the next day.
The jury heard earlier on Monday that Brooks and his friend Chris Palmer had downed six bottles of red wine on the night of 17 July 2011, while Brooks was being quizzed in Lewisham police station.
Brooks claimed that the security man who brought the pair pizzas had also meant to deliver the bags back to him. He had earlier asked the head of security of News International to mind his two briefcases but had never told him why, or that it was to conceal them from the police, Brooks said.
He said he wanted to keep the computers from the police because they contained some porn and a transcript of a novel he was hoping to get published.
His friend Palmer had gone downstairs to pick up the pizzas that evening. Brooks said he recalled that Palmer had remarked months after the incident that the security operative who had brought the bags back to the Chelsea car park had made some "cryptic" remark about the bins when he delivered the pizza on the night of Rebekah's arrest. However, Palmer didn't collect any bags to bring up to the flat alongside the pizzas.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis, QC, put it to him: "You must have noticed there weren't any bags. There was £1,000 in one of them."
Edis referred to a cash payment Brooks had received days earlier from an Ascot charity compering job "and a book in another", a reference to the manuscript for his novel. "Clearly, I didn't [notice]," replied Brooks. "I get a bit sloppy after a couple of bottles of wine."
He said he was desperate to talk to the police that day to explain that the computers had nothing on them relevant to his wife's arrest. "I would have told them everything. This was the moment to put my hands up, say: 'This is my fault'. The people who have done it have not done it at my instigation."
Edis put it to Brooks that he "settled on drunkenness as the only explanation to this chain of events other than your guilt" months later when it emerged there was CCTV footage of the events that took place in the underground car park.
"No, that's not correct," Brooks replied.
Brooks was challenged about an article in the Telegraph, on 20 July 2011, two days after the bags had been found by the cleaner. It quoted a spokesman saying there had been a mixup over the computer with a friend and a story suggesting that he had tried to conceal a laptop from the police was "rubbish".
He denied he was lying to the court and that he and others had purposefully concealed the bags and never intended to deliver them alongside the pizzas and months later created a cover story of a mix up with a friend.
Brooks described two of the computers in his possession, which had News International tags, as a "present" from the company.
Jeremy Clarkson, a friend of the Brooks's, sat in the public gallery to hear Brooks being cross examined.
In the afternoon, the chairman of Goldman Sachs International Peter Sutherland and impresario Harvey Goldsmith paid a brief visit to court 12 sitting among the press.
Brooks denied one charge that he conspired with security staff and his wife to conceal computers and other documents from police.
The trial continues
