The Evening Post has been reporting on the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of Nottingham estate agents Aaron Scargill, which has now ceased trading.
And no aspect is as bizarre as the company’s involvement with a flood of highly libellous magazines that appeared in the city.
The tale includes cloak-and-dagger printing and threats about a menacing Kosovan…
Assistant editor Neil White and reporter Matt Laddin take up the story.

When the managing director of Aaron Scargill estate agents offered cigars all round to celebrate his nephew’s birthday, a trio of relieved senior staff at the Evening Post happily joined him.

Two do not smoke. They had accepted his insistent calls to meet to discuss his company’s growing advertising investment. And they were pleased that a hiccup in the relationship seemed to have melted away with his bonhomie.

What they did not know as they sat with Paul Johal and his colleagues outside Via Fossa in Castle Wharf was that an under-cover photographer with a mission was lurking some distance away.

And shortly afterwards pictures of them, with cigars in hand, appeared on the front page of a scurrilous leaflet flooding the city entitled St George v the Dragon.

From the supposedly amicable drink in the sunshine with a client, they became the victims of massive defamation.

Mr Johal denies being behind the publication. However, only a week before the Via Fossa meeting, his Aaron Scargill company had taken out 10 full pages of advertising in the Evening Post promoting a forthcoming new service to be introduced. Apparently it was to do with the property market. Its title was St George v the Dragon.

Later, as libel lawyers mustered forces, Penny Sommerfeld, Mr Johal’s most senior colleague at Aaron Scargill, spun an extraordinary explanation.

Next page….