Laurence Fox said ex-wife Billie Piper did not want their children staying at his home after he was branded a “racist” on social media and dog faeces was pushed through his letterbox, the High Court has heard.
The actor-turned-activist is locked in a libel battle with former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake, drag artist Crystal, and Coronation Street actress Nicola Thorp over a 2020 spat on Twitter.
Starting his evidence in the case, Fox claimed he has suffered discrimination in a similar way to “debanked” Nigel Farage and detailed abuse he has received in the last few years.
He told the court he received a letter signed “White Wolf” in April 2021, when he was running for London Mayor, with an offer to “sell me guns and other weapons, making a threat on my life if I refused the offer.
“The writer said the weapons were for a civil war coming ahead in the UK. I took this to mean a race war.
“I reported the letter to the police. It felt like I was having an out of body experience, being contacted by such unhinged people was very distressing.”
Fox said dog faeces was twice posted through his letterbox in April 2021, telling the court in his statement: “Thank goodness my three dogs were in the kitchen, and couldn’t reach the front door so they did not touch it.
“I called the police and the second time I had CCTV put up. I felt like I was under attack constantly, I was afraid to leave the house. I was having constant panic attacks, feeling like my heart was beating out of my chest.”
Referring to Ms Piper, who he was married to for a decade, Fox said: “My ex-wife was concerned that my two sons were no longer safe in my house, considering I was now a target.
"I thought she had every right to feel that way, every mother would be worried.”
He says he has struggled to get a mortgage offer since his acting work dried up, and claimed the Twitter spat has affected his financial affairs.
“I have suffered issues similar to Nigel Farage being unfairly ‘debanked’ by his longstanding bank, Coutts, as his political views fell foul of their new inclusivity and diversity policies”, he said.
“For example, I have had my bank on the phone regularly questioning perfectly legitimate transactions. In addition, and for no apparent reason, my car insurance just increased from £1,200 a year to £10,000 a year.
“I believe that this has been caused - or at the very least, significantly contributed to - by the damage done to my reputation by the Claimants’ racism tweets.”
The 2020 storm started when Fox called for a boycott of Sainsbury’s when the supermarket giant announced its support for Black History Month.
All three of his court opponents dubbed him a “racist” online, and in response he called them paedophiles, a slur he says was not meant literally but intended as “meaningless” and to illustrate that the “racist” jibe was equally without foundation.
Fox, the former star of TV’s Lewis who now heads the Reclaim Party, says his agent dropped him after the Twitter dispute, and he claims that decision was directly linked to the social media storm.
“I was flabbergasted”, he told the court. “It was unbearable, I knew that being sacked by an agent was like being sacked as an airline pilot, nobody is going to ask why you got fired, they’ll never hire you again.”
He added: “Without an agent, I had no access to work. It triggered a really painful period of my life, I was depressed, worried, and panicky about income.
"It felt like I would been punished for trying to do something good and make Sainsbury’s less discriminatory. It had a horrible effect on my family too, who were very worried about me.”
Fox was accused at the start of the libel trial of being an “intelligent racist with an agenda”, a claim he refutes.
He says his Christian faith makes it “a command not to be racist in any way”, he argues he is a strong advocate of free speech, and his Twitter posts are aimed at calling out hypocrisy and “virtue signalling”.
Fox says he had reached the high point of his acting career just before the social media storm with Netflix show White Lines, and a second series of the drama never materialised.
He claims he was asked to audition for projects including The Batman, Succession, and Disney’s Obi Wan, as well as being invited on shows including Celebrity Bake Off, but complains his acting work has now dried up.
“After the Claimants’ tweets there was a real ‘pile-on’ by the press and everyone that ‘Laurence Fox is a racist’ and every newspaper jumped on it”, he said.
“It is very, very hard to come back from that.
“Word would have spread about Sue (his agent) dropping me and as a result I would have been black-listed by serious showbusiness, as she was such a prestigious agent.
“It's a source of incredible sadness to me that my skill set, which has been highly trained, used at great length over 23 or 24 years - it's just been completely put away.”
His three opponents say Fox switched from acting to political activism, significantly beginning with a controversial appearance on BBC's Question Time.
Fox is being sued for libel by Mr Blake and Mr Seymour, and he is countersuing them together with Nicola Thorp over the “racism” accusation.
“I thought it would be obvious that in each case I was using the word ‘paedophile’ as a rhetorical device and that it would be clear to everyone that I did not actually believe the Claimants are paedophiles any more than I was a racist – that was the whole point”, he said.
The libel trial continues.
