By Andrew McGhee

If you have not heard of the Packham v Wightman Defamation Case by now, you ought to have. The BBC Presenter Chris Packham is taking the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, Dominic Wightman, the writer Nigel Bean and Bean’s spellchecker Paul Read to the High Court in London for publishing articles which they contend are true, about Packham lying in crowdfunders about rescuing tigers which ‘suffered intolerable cruelty’ at the hands of a Spanish Circus. The fact the tigers went via a loan agreement to Packham’s girlfriend’s commercial zoo in the Isle of Wight, which suddenly changed its name to ‘Sanctuary’ last year, are underlying points of argument.

Dom, to those who know him, is a fearless and serious-minded Editor but he tends to keep to himself so I thought for this article I might ask some of those who know him best what he’s really like. After all, Wightman could easily have rolled over when threatened with the litigation. Instead, just hours after receiving the original threatening legal letter from Packham, which had ‘DO NOT PUBLISH’ written in large letters on it, extraordinarily Wightman published the letter and launched a video directed at Packham clarifying in no uncertain terms that he was willing to defend his magazine’s articles in court, that he was standing upon a ‘mountain of facts’. “How dare you call me a libellist!” he chided Packham. Perhaps the consequent daily smearing by Packham zealots shows how worried they are about him.

What makes the man tick?

I had conversations with Wightman’s old school mate James Flanagan, with the Deputy Editor of Country Squire Magazine, James Bembridge, with a manager of a finance house where Wightman once worked, with retired countryside solicitor and former Countryside Alliance Director Jamie Foster, and with Simon Grace, leader of the activist group Action Against Antis. What makes Dom Wightman tick? Who is he? And why, as someone who ‘was too busy playing rugby to find the time to hunt or shoot’ is he standing up for Field Sports and the Countryside in such a life-changing battle? 

James Flanagan, of the Pembrokeshire, was at school with Wightman and knows him well:

“I met Dom when we were thirteen-year-old schoolboys at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire. When we met he was a small boy, known simply as ‘scholar’ and I remember him being serious even then about his work. In our first year I recollect there was one of the older boys bullying a bunch of us in the study and Dom was trying to finish off a History essay. The bully was a big lad. Dom got up from his chair, declared, ‘I have had enough of this’ and laid the bully flat on the floor, warning those around the bully to leave our year alone. He’s a born leader and tough to boot. I also remember when he was playing for the rugby team, he was a nifty winger in the A’s. He’d had a couple of bad matches and so the rugby coach, a Father Timothy, took the A team to play the team from the year above and made sure that Dom’s opposite number was a boy called Mongo McNally who had this dreaded high knee lift and was lightning fast. Mongo was twice the size of Dom. In effect Dom was playing for his place in the team that afternoon and this was a test set up purely for him, to see what he was made of. We all knew it.  Dom flattened Mongo every single time he ran at him and I recall walking back to the house with Dom afterwards and pointing out that he was covered in bruises and bleeding all over from stud cuts but he was still so pumped up and focused he’d not noticed. Dom’s courageous and has a wicked sense of humour. In our penultimate year there were in effect elections for Head Boy, and we’d go and see the headmaster individually to discreetly express our choice for head boy, choosing from 130 boys. Dom won the boys’ vote by quite some margin, but the teachers went with some teachers’ pet instead. I remember Dom was openly pissed off about this obvious injustice at the time and in our top year when he was our Head of House – I think they gave him Deputy Head boy and a few other senior roles to try and placate him. A term later he imported £1000 of booze from a local wine merchant, formed a human chain of boys from the taxi to his Head of House room to relay the booze into the house, and then we all had a memorable party. He had to resign his positions subsequently, but I know he had no regrets. In a strict school run by Benedictines this was legendary behaviour! He was close to expulsion but argued his way out of it by blaming ‘original sin’ so got just a few weeks of gardening as punishment! He’s not someone who suffers fools gladly and he’ll fight injustices. He doesn’t hunt or shoot but he’s fighting on a matter of principle. He’s exactly how I expected him to turn out, frankly. We’re lucky that fate has chosen him as our challenger against Packham. He’ll be all over the detail of this case like a rash and he’ll deliver his points like a machine gun.”

Wightman’s Deputy Editor at Country Squire Magazine, James Bembridge, also describes him as a tough cookie:

“I saw Dom just after Christmas when he was in London delivering a box of our latest print editions to me. I suggested we go for a drink, but he said no that he had to go and meet investigators. He’s absolutely focused on the case. I am looking forward to the Old Dom coming back when the court case is over but whatever he has lined up will be thorough and calculated. He’s a brilliant Editor and has the hide of an elephant. We have a good laugh together and sometimes things get a bit tense, but he’ll be fine whatever the result as he’s both steely and empathetic.”  

Wightman worked for a major foreign back in the 1990’s. His manager there, a Ms Breitenkamp, remembers him with affection but as a headache:

“We all loved Dom. Here was a very English young man in Berlin just after the wall had come down with an open mind and original insights. He was dressed in pin stripes and wore a coat only an English guy would wear, with velvet on the collar. He started on the bank’s ‘lehrling’ apprenticeship programme after winning a scholarship, and we gave him the task of selling securities alongside a stockbroker to walk-ins at a branch on the Unter den Linden. I remember he was very good at marketing Euro Disney shares but on the other hand the branch manager was annoyed that he had to disappear every day for extra German classes. Eventually I found out that these ‘extra German classes’ involved a tall blonde lady from another branch, and we had to move him into the central office for a while, which he hated. He was very young at the time, 18 or 19.  Banking can be dull, and he was too innovative for our department, so he went after a year or so and studied economics back in London. He’s grown up a lot since! We are still in touch on business now and have worked on some serious matters since. He’s a good man.”

Jamie Foster describes Wightman as “Great fun. He’s sharp but very kind to his friends. One Christmas I had no plans, so he invited me to his home in Devon, and my abiding recollection is of him sitting at the head of a long table roaring with laughter as we opened our crackers. The jokes were really, really rude and some of the guests were appalled, suggesting we should all sue the cracker company. I cottoned on from Dom’s reaction that he’d removed the rubbish jokes and planted others in the crackers. Mine involved a particular sexual activity with the rather elderly lady sitting opposite me. He has been loyal to me, and I am watching the case against Packham with real interest. ”

After university Wightman worked in the city and ran his own web-based finance marketing business for a while before leaving for the US where he lived for a few years before returning to the UK when his father, the corporate financier John Wightman, died in July 2005. Back in the UK he worked for a while in the counter extremism space, with think tanks in Westminster and with the Conservative Party. But it was a passion for business that resulted in project after project until he settled on some work that he enjoyed that pays the bills.

James Flanagan continues: “I know exactly what Dom does for a living, but I’d not mention it to anyone. He’s annoyed so many trolls over the years, from Corbynites to Islamists to sabs, that I’d not want any of that pressure placed on his work colleagues or clients. The Editorship of Country Squire is a very part time role and would never pay his bills. He’s told me he does it because he loves it, the way it opens certain doors, how it keeps him abreast of the news and current trends, gets him up at the crack of dawn and how he is great friends with many of the writers.”

While in America, Wightman was the toy boy of a former Miss World. But once his father died and he was back home, he bought a Labrador, found a cottage and then married the love of his life, the Venezuelan model Widmaru Calma, with whom he has two children. He has now settled down and lives a quiet, rural life away from the court cases and drama, happiest walking his dogs and spending time with his kids.

James Bembridge remarks, “The thing about Dom is that he really doesn’t give a damn. When there are trolls, political opponents or even conservative allies bad-mouthing him he doesn’t give a jot. Some of the abuse he’s taken from the sabs and from the lefties when he was working on the downfall of Corbyn some years ago, it’s like water off a duck’s back. There’s a granite there that makes him a bit different. He’d rather be in a pub watching football than attending a soiree at the Carlton Club. He has no time at all for any of the false set, name droppers or social mountaineers.”

Simon Grace, who runs Action Against Antis, who got to know Wightman when the Packham litigation started, strikes a similar note: “Dom’s one of us. He may not shoot or hunt, he does a bit of fishing, but he’s got a genuine love of the countryside and he’s a formidable thinker and speaker but above all he’s a wily strategist. He’s a great asset at a time when the antis are coming at us like a steam train.”

Last word to Robin Cross-Carpenter, the countryside activist who has worked closely with Dom on exposing some of the antis, particularly the awful Chris Roberts who posed as Serenwyl Rhosier and caused so much damage to the hunting community over many years before getting lit up in Country Squire:

“I am glad Dom is my friend, that is all I would say.”

Camp Packham may have unwittingly stirred up a hornet’s nest, whatever the result of the upcoming court case. British defamation law is especially backward, just ask Johnnie Depp.

The case Packham v Wightman, Bean and Read QB-2021-001227 shall be heard in the High Court in London from May 2^nd this year.