Mayor and a mystery 12-ft fall

Mystery today surrounded an incident at a late-night London party involving Ken Livingstone, the police, a magazine art editor and a fall down a 12-foot stairwell.

Mr Livingstone and his pregnant partner Emma Beal were at the party which was thrown to celebrate the 40th birthday of Emma's older sister, Kate.

It is believed the man who fell, Robin Hedges, 35, had tried to intervene when the Mayor remonstrated with his girlfriend for smoking. Minutes later he was found at the bottom of the stairwell.

At around 1.30am an ambulance was called to "a fight in progress" at Kate Beal's home in Tufnell Park Road.

Police were alerted by the ambulance crew, at 1.34am, following reports of a man being injured.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "On arrival, officers found a man had accidentally fallen over some side steps by the front door, ending up in the basement below. No allegations were made against any other person."

Mr Hedges, art editor of the Standard's ES magazine, was taken to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead with severe bruising. He was signed off work for four weeks. He was badly shaken up and upset by the incident and has been forced to cancel a planned holiday to Chile because he could not face such a lengthy flight.

Today Mr Hedges said: "It was a horrible business and I'm still trying to get over it and come to terms with what happened both mentally and physically.

"Emma is my closest friend and I don't want to do anything that might upset her."

Mr Hedges, of Archway, north London, said he had no plans to sue Mr Livingstone or take the matter forward.

The incident is understood to have greatly upset Emma and her sister Kate, a sales manager for publishers Faber and Faber.

An ambulance spokeswoman said they received a 999 call to an address in Tufnell Park Road at 1.30am on Sunday 19 May to reports of a fight. They found a man who had been injured after a fall.

Mr Hedges fell 12ft from the steps leading up to the raised ground-floor flat into the whitewashed front garden of the basement flat next door.

Ambulance men put his head in a neckbrace as a precaution and spent 40 minutes treating him. Today the rubber surgical gloves that they used could still be seen.

One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "It was 1.20 in the morning not last Saturday, the Saturday before. A woman next door had been celebrating her 40th birthday party and the party started at about 8pm.

"It was quite noisy and I went to bed at 11pm and it was still going on.

"I must have been dozing but at 1.20am I was awoken by hearing a thump in the garden just outside my bedroom window. I heard a girl taking charge and saying to people 'I've called an ambulance, nobody move him'.

"I was glad about that and I listened and heard the ambulancemen and the police arrive. The ambulancemen put a neck collar on him as he lay out there and they were asking him how much he had had to drink and telling him not to move.

"The police and ambulancemen must have left at about ten to two and it was all over."

A spokeswoman for the Mayor said today: "I don't think this is something we can comment on."

Only yesterday the Evening Standard revealed that Emma, 36, was pregnant with 56-year-old Mr Livingstone's child.

The couple have refused to comment publicly on the pregnancy - which has come early on in the relationship between them.

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