The academic who took on Steve Coogan and won

Steve Coogan and two production companies will pay “substantial damages” to a university academic to settle a High Court libel case over his portrayal in a film about the discovery of Richard III’s remains.

Richard Taylor, chief operating officer at Loughborough University, sued Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions for libel over his portrayal in The Lost King, which follows Philippa Langley and her search to find the king’s skeleton.

In June last year, Judge Jaron Lewis ruled that the 2022 film portrayed Mr Taylor, who was deputy registrar at the University of Leicester at the time of the discovery, as having “knowingly misrepresented facts to the media and the public” about the find.

The judge also said the film portrayed Mr Taylor as “smug, unduly dismissive and patronising”, which had a defamatory meaning.

Mr joined Andrew Marr to talk about his experience and give his side of the story, stating that it was ‘a surreal feeling of shock to see the film’, and he had to reach out to colleagues and partners to reassure them that his portrayal in the film wasn’t what he was like in real life.

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