Bruiser with a taste for the high life

It is a measure of the seriousness with which George Galloway took his libel action against the Daily Telegraph that in the run-up to the case, he mentioned that he had given up smoking his favourite cigars - " Montecristo No 2, they're like torpedoes" - as an economy measure to make sure he could pay his legal bills.

Gorgeous George, the sharpsuited MP for Glasgow Kelvin, has always had a taste for the high life. Even as a young councillor in Dundee he indulged in first-class travel and he once jokingly described himself as a "Bollinger Bolshevik".

But if there is one thing 50-year-old Galloway likes more than the fine things in life, it is a good scrap.

A skillful Commons performer, he is pugnacious to a fault. Indeed, it sometimes seems he would not object if the debate went somewhat beyond the normal civilised exchanges across the floor. A former middleweight boxer, he once told an interviewer there were quite a few people in the Commons "I'd like to go five rounds with".

So when the Daily Telegraph accused him of taking money from Saddam Hussein's regime, it is easy to imagine Galloway welcoming his day in court. He has a good record when it comes to libel. It is estimated he had won ?250,000 from libel actions over the years, including ?50,000 from the Christian Science Monitor over allegations similar to the Telegraph's.

But the Telegraph seemed ready for a fight, too. Those documents in Baghdad must have appeared to be the long-awaited evidence to nail "the MP for Baghdad Central".

In one notorious interview as the war began, he called Blair and Bush "wolves" and called on Arab nations to rise up in defence of Baghdad.

Galloway has nurtured strong pro-Arab views ever since he was a Dundee councillor and a Palestinian activist walked into his office to tell him about the plight of the Palestinian people.

In the Nineties he launched an appeal to help an Iraqi girl called Mariam Hamza, suffering from leukaemia in a Baghdad hospital. She came to Glasgow for treatment and later returned to Iraq, but the Mariam Appeal carried on campaigning against the UN sanctions on Iraq.

However, it was his dealings with Saddam Hussein which earned the greatest opprobrium. In 1994 he was captured on camera telling the Iraqi dictator: "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability," although he claimed his remarks were addressed to the Iraqi people.

Galloway pointed out that over the years he had also described Saddam as " brutal", "ruthless" and "vulgar", but the damage was done.

In October last year the Labour Party expelled him. As usual, he refused to go without a fight. He formed his own political party, Respect, and tried to win a seat as an MEP in the June Euro elections, without success.

After today's verdict, it is unlikely we have heard the last of George Galloway.