Cream drummer Ginger Baker vows to strip off in court

The drummer in 1960s band Cream is planning to drop his trousers in court to prove he didn't have a sexual relationship with his assistant.

Ginger Baker, 69, said he was willing to strip off to help secure the prosecution of Lindiwe Noko, who is accused of defrauding him out of £30,000.

Miss Noko claims that she was the musician's lover and that he gave her the money as a gift, but he says he can prove that they were never intimate.



"I've a scar that only a woman who had a thing with me would know. It's there and she doesn't know it's there," he said. He refused to divulge the nature of the scar, unless Miss Noko found out. "I'm quite prepared to strip. It may well come down to it," he added.

Mr Baker played alongside Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton in the psychedelic rock group until their split in 1968. Since then he has played with several eponymous bands inlcuding Ginger Baker's Air Force, as well as stints with Hawkwind and Public Image Limited. He reunited with his former Cream bandmates for gigs in 1993 and 2005.

He now lives in South Africa, where the fraud case will come before a court in January. He met Miss Noko at the bank where she worked as a clerk. They became friends, but he alerted police after discovering money missing from his account.