The end of a 30-year friendship for media darlings

GLASGOW University's Queen Margaret Halls of Residence weren't much to write home about in 1979. Ugly buildings with boxy rooms and communal toilets, they were populated by a generation of teenagers clinging on to the final dregs of the 1970s. But it was here, between two very different students, that the seeds were sown of a 28-year relationship, which ended this week in an acrimonious High Court battle.

Those two young men, Alan Clements and Hamish Barbour, may never have been the best of friends at university. "He ran with a very groovy music crowd and I was a nerdy, history kind of guy," recalls Clements. But in later life, as the husbands of two of Scotland's most famous women, Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark and broadcaster Muriel Gray, their paths were always going to be intertwined.

So much so that on Wednesday, a judge ruled that Clements, 46, was guilty of "snooping" in Barbour's emails, while Barbour, also 46, was revealed to have received an email that discussed "going after Alan" - after Clements attempted to quit their company, IWC, for a job at rival firm SMG. It was an ignominious end to a partnership that, just three and a half years ago, looked as if it could take on the world.

In March 2004 the two most powerful couples in the Scottish media appeared the best of friends when they announced that they were hitching together their respective wagons - production company Wark Clements and Barbour and Gray's vehicle Ideal World - to create IWC, the country's biggest independent TV firm. It was a glittering merger, full of promises of competing with the London big boys and beyond.

According to the two couples, things couldn't be rosier. "It was a case of falling in love with your best friend's girlfriend," Clements told the press.

Well, maybe not quite. Clem-ents is slightly less effusive in his praise these days. "It had its ups and downs as all these things do," he says. "But everybody wanted to make a decent fist of it."

"There was always an issue of profile in there," says one insider. "People kept referring to it as 'Kirsty Wark's company'. But she was a non exec director, as was Muriel. Neither had many dealings with IWC. It was Hamish and Alan who were running the company, along with [managing director] Sue Oriel."

The two couples, who live with their families just a short walk from each other in Glasgow's leafy west end, had been, at least in the eyes of the press, competing for Scotland's media crown for some time. Their approaches may have been different, but the couples were long-time admirers of each other.

Gray once described Wark as "the best we've got", confessing: "I also slightly fancy her, she's got such sparkly eyes." Even this week Alan Clements was still describing Barbour as "an incredibly talented man".

Wark, the country's unofficial "head girl" with her no-nonsense attitude and impeccable political connections, had formed Wark Clements with her husband in 1990, building it into a respected production firm.

Gray, meanwhile, with her bleached crop and spiky attitude, had made a name for herself as the opinionated presenter of The Tube before creating Ideal World with Barbour, a feisty firm that ran the gamut from serious documentaries to the Channel 4 property show Location, Location, Location.

That the two couples would run into each other was inevitable. "I was at Wark Clements, he was at Ideal World. You know these industry events," says Clements. "It's a very small world."

But was it big enough for the both of them? At first, it seemed so. IWC kept expanding and the two men worked well together. "The families were not particularly close, but they were perfectly friendly as colleagues," says a source. Yet in December 2005 they sold up, for a hefty 14 million, to London-based rival RDF Media.

With Gray and Wark having sold their shareholdings, the two husbands were left in the driving seat. "Oddly enough, in the last months before I left we were working much more closely together," says Clements. "I had no animus against Hamish at all."

Yet it didn't stop him wanting to jump ship. A source says: "Out of the blue SMG came along and said: 'We'd like you to be head of content for SMG'. And he went: 'Bloody hell'."

The pair haven't spoken since Clements resigned on 30 March. Insiders say Clements underestimated the depth of Barbour's anger at his departure. Certainly, he was taken aback by what was described as a "vitriolic" briefing that Oriel gave to a journalist.

Barbour, meanwhile, has moved on. IWC has a number of projects on the stocks at the moment, including the anticipated A Year in the Life of JK Rowling, to be aired soon by ITV1. The firm has also hired a raft of new executives since Clements' departure. "The company feels like a very different company to the one it was six months ago," Barbour says. "We've got a great new team, the best we've ever had, and the ideas are coming thick and fast. The future is dazzlingly bright."

As for Clements, he remains in a strange sort of limbo, sitting at home and unable to start his new job, while his wife takes the sleeper to London for her regular stints on Newsnight.

"All the Christmas cards have been done already," he says.

This year, though, there won't be one for Hamish and Muriel.

SCOTS MEDIA'S GOLDEN COUPLES

WARK CLEMENTS and Ideal World, the respective companies of Kirsty Wark and Alan Clements, and Muriel Gray and Hamish Barbour, merged to become IWC in May 2004.

Ranked as Scotland's two biggest independent TV companies with an annual turnover in excess of 9 million each, the plan was to create a Scottish independent big enough to take on the London scene.

However, in December 2005 IWC was sold to RDF Media for 14 million in a deal thought to have netted almost 2 million for each couple. While Gray and Wark relinquished their roles as non-executive directors, Barbour and Clements, along with managing director Sue Oriel, were deeply involved as joint creative directors. Clements signed a three year "non-compete" clause as part of the deal.

In March of this year SMG approached Clements about becoming its new head of content. Clements resigned from IWC by email on 30 March. On 6 April Oriel gave an off the record briefing to a newspaper about Clements described by the journalist as "vitriolic". Clements' lawyers advised him this amounted to constructive dismissal. RDF terminated Clements' contract on 3 May.

Clements asked his wife's personal assistant, Janice McKnight, to access Barbour's private email inbox on RDF's website to monitor what was being said about him. In one email, sent on 4 April, RDF chief executive David Frank had written to Barbour: "I fully understand your feelings and am right behind you in going after Alan. I think he's let everyone down in a major major way. I'd love to get even."

The case came to the High Court in November and on Wednesday deputy Bernard Livesey QC ruled that Clements was in breach of contract by talking to SMG while still employed by RDF, and awarding RDF a court order preventing Clements from working for SMG until December 2008.

Clements plans to appeal.