'He sits a broken man, ruined, in failing health'

"He's a man who has already suffered the indignity of falling from a great height," he continued. "A man who had a desperate upbringing, whether at the hands of the poverty-stricken East End (of Sunderland) or the institutions in which he found himself. A man who built up a reputation and an empire and then enjoyed wealth. He has suffered greatly."

It was all too much for the man locked away behind thick glass panels in the dock. For most of the day, he had listened with a studied indifference. His co-accused and cousin to his left, Richard Tennick, concentrated on every syllable intently, his steely glare never averting from whoever was speaking, no muscle moving.

But George Reynolds rolled back in his chair, rolling his neck and his eyes, rattling the packaging of the Nicotinell gum that he chews incessantly, fiddling and feigning disinterest.

Yet as his Queen's Counsel, David Robson, reached for his climax, Mr Reynolds slumped forward in the dock, showing the short wispy white hair on the top of his head. He wiped his eye. Had there been a tear in it? Could he have seen his career crumble in that sober courtroom?

Mr Robson wasn't quite finished. "His burning desire (was) to make this football club the outstanding club of the region. He sits a broken man, personally and financially, ruined, in failing health with failing memory."

Can there have been a dry eye in the house?

Mr Robson - a charmingly fuddery barrister of 40 years experience and with a wry smile playing around his lips - had laid it on theatrically thick. From grinding poverty, his client had built up a business - Direct Worktops - which he sold for £30m-plus.

"His social life was work. He didn't go out to dinner, he doesn't drink. His only luxury, as awful as it is, is chewing Nicotinell to stop him from smoking," said the QC who, at the close of the day's proceedings disappeared with a big grin for "a nicotine blast".

"Tragically, thanks to Darlington Football Club - football being a sport that he doesn't have the slightest interest in - it's all gone. The house next to the Spice Girls gone, the yacht has gone, the house in the Lake District, gone." He really has lost everything - even his famous comb-over hairstyle from the top of his head.

Seeing it all slip through his fingers, said Mr Robson of the lost fortune, "he did an extraordinary thing. He went to the little Co-op bank in Shildon and informed them that he wanted half-a-million in notes." This, he explained, was to be the 69-year-old's pension.

"That was bound to trigger a response from the bank. It might have been going to Iraq to fuel the insurgency - I think that's what they had in mind." Extraordinary indeed: dictator Saddam in court in Baghdad one day; chairman George in court in Newcastle the next.

Mr Robson revealed that Mr Reynolds had poured £27m of his own money - and a little that should have been the taxman's - into building "a centre of entertainment and enrichment for Darlington".

"What became the ruination of Mr Reynolds was a dream of giving to Darlington," he said. "I hope I'm not offending anybody in court: it has never struck me as the most exciting town in the universe in which to live compared, of course, to Newcastle."

But what a sophisticated stadium Mr Reynolds had brought to Darlington! "Nowhere else do the people who go to watch pretty dreadful performances go to their seats by escalators. No steps for them," said the counsel.

"If they desire to dispose of the contents of their bladder after a drinking session, they do so in marble halls."

In bringing marble halls to the people of Darlington, Mr Reynolds flushed his fortune away. Money down the pan. "In the process he ruined himself."

This talk of movements was moving. But there was at least one dry eye in the court. It belonged to the judge, Guy Whitburn QC. He's a man who enjoys puncturing purple prose. He calls a spade a spade - last month at Teesside Crown Court he told a man who hit a burglar over the head with a garden shovel "I only wish you had hit him harder".

Mr Robson lamented that "the asset strippers who now own Darlington Football Club" had paid Mr Reynolds just £1m for Witton Hall when it was worth considerably more. Mr Whitburn pointed out that "there aren't many houses in Durham of that figure" and that Mr Reynolds had freely chosen to get into bed with the Sterling Consortium of financiers.

Mr Robson lamented that the money Mr Reynolds had taken from the football club - £2,000 for wineglasses, £4,000 for place settings, enough for 500 Leylandii trees - had not been "for his own personal sweetshop account. It was for the football club".

The judge, resplendent in a mauve robe with a cerise sash, jumped up. "Not entirely so," he countered, leafing through the ledgers to see what sort of banknotes Mr Reynolds had converted £7,000 of club money into. "I don't think pesetas are a currency normally used in Darlington," he said, finding the relevant accounts.

As Mr Robson rallied to the finale that brought moistness to even Mr Reynolds' eye, the judge chose his moment to sum up the tax cheat charges. "To put it in its simplest: at a time when he was extremely wealthy, he has admitted making minimal returns to the Revenue for four years," he said. "That's flagrant of itself."

Mr Robson said he had struggled to get "sensible instructions" from Mr Reynolds and so had put psychiatrists and psychologists on the case. "There may be a psychiatric problem, a personality disorder," said Mr Robson. "(Mr Reynolds) is working on the borderline and (his) memory is not good of recent events."

Of £120,000-a-year Mr Reynolds' failure to include anything more than his old age pension on his tax returns, Mr Robson said: "(It) may have been related to the issue of his mental condition, of his capacity to understand the importance of paperwork."

Earlier in the day, Judge Whitburn was heard to laugh when told that the finances of DFC "in all candidness are still not entirely clear". This time what sounded like a snort of derision emanated from the bench. "I find that very difficult to believe," he said. "He's been an extremely successful businessman for a very long time.

"He's bought and sold in millions."

Mr Whitburn finished by saying "I have yet to make up my mind" about a custodial sentence, and with a jangle of keys Mr Reynolds was free from the dock, perhaps for one last night in his flat in Neville's Cross ("very modest" according to Mr Robson; "penthouse" according to Mr Reynolds).

Earlier, Mr Reynolds had compared legal proceedings to rabbits with myxomatosis - the more they are exposed to it, the more immunity they develop. "I'm immune to court cases," he said.

As he left court, his lifetime's exposure caused him to say: "I will sleep well tonight. I'm not worried by it. You see a big black picture and then it goes pear-shaped. It's happened before."

Then he added defiantly: "It's shown I put all I could into the football club."

As he shuffled off, shorn of fawning acolytes and alone without even his fortune, he almost looked like the broken man of Mr Robson's lurid description.

A tear welled, but Judge Whitburn does not look like the type to have his vision clouded by sentimentality.