Manager at VIP Cobden Club and his friend are cleared of raping woman in hotel room
- Billy Brannigan, 61was accused of assaulting the woman after she passed out
- Chris Agathocleous, 55, was also accused of the rape that happened in 1997
A VIP nightclub manager and his friend have been cleared of raping a woman in a hotel room after a jury deliberated for less than two hours.
Billy Brannigan, 61, who ran the exclusive Cobden Club, once popular with stars including Kate Moss and Jade Jagger, was accused of assaulting the woman with its head chef Chris Agathocleous, 55, after she drunkenly passed out in the room in 1997.
The woman claimed she awoke to find Brannigan and Agathocleous on top of her before freeing herself and fleeing naked into the street.
The woman, who cannot be named, was in her early 20s and had just finished university when she was offered a glamorous front-of-house job at the Cobden Club in 1997.
But Brannigan insisted the woman barged into his room demanding a game of ‘spin the bottle’ and stripped naked – but sex never took place.
Billy Brannigan (pictured), who ran the exclusive Cobden Club once popular with stars including Kate Moss and Jade Jagger, was accused of raping the woman with cook Chris Agathocleous after she ‘passed out’ in a seedy hotel room in 1997
Agathocleous told the court he was asleep in bed and his barrister Paul Jackson said that was why the woman never saw the distinctive lion tattoo on his arm.
‘Your task is very straightforward. All you have to do is ask yourself at every stage ‘Are we sure?,’ Mr Jackson told the jury at Southwark crown court.
‘You have to be sure that what she says happened in fact happened. In this case, in relation to Mr Agathocleous, I say, how can you be?’
Mr Jackson then went on to point out various inconsistencies in the account of the alleged victim.
He said she had claimed that Agathocleous was the head chef at the Cobden Club, but he was not.
Mr Jackson also pointed out that Agathocleous had no previous convictions for sexual assault.
‘You know his antecedents, you know his history. Not one single sexual offence, ever.’
He asked whether key witness Josh Astor had had a motive for encouraging the woman to complain.
Brannigan, 61, insisted the woman barged into his room demanding a game of ‘spin the bottle’ and stripped naked – but sex never took place
Head chef Chris Agathocleous, 55, was also accused of attacking the woman at the hotel after she drunkenly passed out in the room in 1997
‘Has [Agathocleous] had the last two to three years of his life ruined because in 1997 Josh Astor wanted to buy Brannigan’s shares in the club?’
The barrister said the woman was unable to remember a lion tattoo that Agathocleous has on his right arm, and that this was consistent with him being asleep in bed as he had claimed.
‘She would remember a lion tattoo. It is unmissable.’
‘That is consistent with him being in bed, asleep in the room, exactly as he told you.’
He also pointed out that the woman had claimed that she had only continued to work at the Cobden Club for a few more weeks after she was allegedly raped when she continued there for much longer.
‘That is your complainant about who you need to be sure before you can convict Mr Agathocleus.
‘The only verdict you can return against Mr Agathocleus is not guilty.’
Brannigan and Agathocleous were both cleared by the jury after the panel deliberated for an hour and 31 minutes.
Giving evidence, Brannigan told the court the woman had barged into the room and insisted of a game of spin the bottle – but sex never took place.
He claimed the woman would have been left with bruises if he had raped her.
He said: ‘I am a very heavy man who would have bruised her if I had tried to have sex with her.’
Agathocleous denied any sexual activity with the woman and branded the allegations against him as ‘bulls-t’.
He told the prosecutor: ‘I am telling you now there is no way I would ever rape a woman, hurt a woman, or anything like that.’
Agathocleous said he did not fancy the alleged victim because he thought she looked anorexic and was ‘off her nut’.
The two men sighed with relief and shook hands after the jury gave their unanimous verdict.
Judge Deborah Francis told them: ‘I would like to thank you all for the great work that you have done and the consideration you have given to this matter. Without you the system does not work.’
The woman was in her early 20s and had just finished university when she was offered a job at the Cobden Club in 1997.
The exclusive Cobden Club was once popular with stars including Kate Moss and Jade Jagger
She told jurors how one night she finished work and had drinks with Brannigan and Agathocleous.
She said they ended up at a hotel in Paddington where they shared a bottle of vodka.
The woman claimed she was attacked after she passed out and got into a single bed.
The alleged victim said she finally had the courage to report the assault after confiding in a new boyfriend about it in 2020.
Asked why she complained to Mr Johnson, rather than calling police from the hotel, she said.
‘I was terrified. I was frightened, I didn’t know what to do. Obviously that was my solution.’
The Cobden Club was founded by Brannigan and funded by investor Mr Johnson, also the brains behind Pizza Express
Josh Astor, 56, who was a director, board member and an investor in the Cobden Club, told the court that the alleged victim had said she ‘hated Billy Brannigan’, and went on to tell him that he had gang raped her with another man.
‘We touched on the subject of the Cobden Club. I mentioned Billy Brannigan and she ‘I hate him, hate him, hate him’, and burst into tears.’
Brannigan said in his police interview he was ‘aghast’ that the woman ended up in a hotel room with him.
‘I am aghast that she is in the room with me. I don’t want her there.’
Brannigan said the woman wanted to play ‘spin the bottle.’
Agathocleous denied he had any sexual contact with the woman and said ‘she looked anorexic’
‘The bottle was spun, she was naked.’
He said she jumped into bed with him for about a minute, and then he jumped out.
‘She looked at me and said ‘I don’t want him [Agathocleous], I want you.’
Brannigan said he feared that he was getting into ‘very dangerous territory’.
‘I knew we were getting into very dangerous territory.
‘I was very harsh with her. She got up, grabbed her clothes. She started to put on her clothes and raced out of the door.’
English musician Paul Simonon, bassist for the punk rock band The Clash, with his wife and manager Tricia Ronane (left) and fashion model Kate Moss at a party for the documentary film ‘The Clash: Westway to the World’ at the Cobden Club, London, 21st September 1999
Giving evidence, Brannigan said he felt bullied by the woman as she insisted they play spin the bottle.
‘I was in a state of intense fatigue,’ he said.
‘I am in a terrible state. In that moment I felt I was bullied.’
‘You are the boss,’ prosecutor Mary Prior, KC, reminded him.
‘I get it,’ Brannigan replied.
Ms Prior said: ‘You can fire her. You are not in any sense being bullied are you?’
‘At that stage I had given up,’ he said.
Brannigan claimed that he had been trying to get to sleep when she initiated the game, and that within a few minutes she was naked.
He said that the woman finally left the hotel room after they lost patience with her and told her to ‘f**k off’, adding.
‘She had her clothing and only left in a hurry. She did not flee.’
He insisted that he could not have raped her as there was no evidence of any bruising on the woman’s body.
Earlier in the trial, the woman told Southwark Crown Court in south London: ‘It seemed brilliant, I was given all these outfits to wear.
‘It was a very elegant, very trendy place,’ she said. [Brannigan] was a bit of a celebrity in Notting Hill. One night after work I had some drinks with Brannigan and the head chef.
John Lydon of The Sex Pistols pictured during a photocall at the Cobden Club in London 2002 where he announced the groups one-off gig at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre
‘They were friends and work colleagues. We finished work, closed the club and went to a hotel in Paddington. We got a room, a bottle of vodka and did some shots. There was no sex or kissing or flirting involved.
‘We were, in my mind, just friends having a drink after work.
‘They were both married men, I worked with them. I didn’t feel vulnerable around them. We were just having fun.’
She said she got ‘drunk enough to pass out’ and got into one of the single beds in the room.
‘The next thing I knew, I woke up to find I had been undressed and had two men on top of me, raping me,’ she added.
‘They must have seen me go to sleep and at that moment decided to take advantage of me. I was in complete and utter shock, I didn’t know what was going on.
‘I was completely horrified and frightened.’
Brannigan grew up in Ireland, studying in Dublin before working for the Bank of Ireland.
He worked at a restaurant in Manhattan, where he started off as a waiter before becoming a floor manager.
Brannigan explained that he invested £25,000 in the Cobden Club, which opened in Notting Hill in 1996.
Agathocleous denied he had any sexual contact with the woman and said ‘she looked anorexic’, adding: ‘She just seemed like a bit of a crazy bird, I thought she was off her nut.
‘I paid for the hotel room, got the key, I remember vividly the woman [at the desk] saying [the victim] can’t come in… she thought she was a ‘lady of the night’
‘I thought thank f*** for that,’ Agathocleous told the court.
The Cobden Club opened in Notting Hill, west London, in 1996. Its members included author Will Self and TV stars Amanda de Cadenet and Mariella Frostrup. The late Amy Winehouse sang there regularly during the early part of her career.
It was founded by Brannigan and funded by investor Mr Johnson, also the brains behind Pizza Express. He is not accused of any crime. The club closed in 2010.
Brannigan, of Notting Hill, and Agathocleous, of Crouch End, both denied and were cleared of one charge of rape.
Source: Read Full Article
