Zeta and Douglas 'used Hello!'

Hello! owner Eduardo Sanchez Junco today told the High Court that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas used his magazine as a bargaining tool to make more money from their wedding.

The Hollywood stars negotiated with a number of magazines before signing a £1 million deal for exclusive pictures of their marriage with rivals OK!

Today Mr Sanchez Junco told the court: "We were used in order to raise the price of exclusivity." He added: "The wedding was offered to various media, including ourselves, not to maintain privacy but solely to establish competition which would raise the price for exclusivity.

"The protection of his client's privacy did no t appear to me from my conversations with Allen Burry (Douglas's public relations adviser) to be his primary concern."

Other stars have refused to do an exclusive picture deal and as a result enjoyed much greater privacy for their weddings, said Mr. Sanchez Junco. They include Julia Roberts and Daniel Moder, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and Madonna and Guy Ritchie, the court heard.

Zeta-Jones and Douglas both told the court this week that they had decided to make a deal with OK! and impose extraordinary levels of security to ban their 350 guests from taking photographs to ensure they would have no trouble with the media.

Zeta-Jones claimed that when Hello! secured six blurred photographs taken by a gatecrasher she felt "violated" and Douglas compared it to having his house "ransacked" and possessions strewn across the street.

But Mr Sanchez Junco said: "For those who wish to protect their privacy a feature in a magazine does not achieve that... and publicity prior to their wedding ensures there is a great deal of media interest on the day of the wedding."

The Hello! boss, known in Spain as the "king of celebrity magazines", denied claims that he had been "spiteful" in covering the Douglas wedding in 2000. He insisted his magazines had always treated Zeta-Jones and Douglas in "a fair and balanced" way.

He said the fact the couple had signed a deal with his rivals "obliged me, from an editorial point of view, to let my readers see some coverage".

He said "spoiling" other magazines' exclusives was a regular practice and he had been a victim in the past.

Mr Sanchez Junco has denied he had any part in a conspiracy to gatecrash the wedding and wreck the deal with OK!

OK! is suing Hello! for £1.75 million for lost sales and syndication rights following publication of the unauthorised pictures by Mr Sanchez Junco.

Zeta-Jones and Douglas are also suing Hello! in a joint action for £500,000 for an alleged invasion of their privacy.

The case continues.