It was a meeting those present said they would never forget, particularly when he added that the News of the World had no proof and he planned to deny the stories and sue.
Tommy Sheridan pushed the self-destruct button at the heated meeting on November 9, 2004.
His conviction yesterday was the end of a tortuous legal road that destroyed his political career, led to a police raid on his family home, risked his marriage and brought the party he led to its knees.
His remarkable victory in the resulting libel action in 2006 was just a temporary respite. He asked the jury in that case to believe that 18 witnesses had committed perjury to bring him down.
In the criminal trial he claimed many more were part of a Machiavellian conspiracy, and in both cases the politician-turned-law student set out to turn the jury against the Sunday tabloid.
His extraordinary thesis was that he almost single-handedly defeated the poll tax and Margaret Thatcher, and big business wanted him silenced. To do so, the capitalist machine concocted a series of lies about his personal life and Rupert Murdoch's News International set out to destroy him.
But it was Sheridan, the "happily married, clean-cut socialist who had concocted the lies.
He appeared to believe perjury was not such a serious crime when used to defeat a tabloid newspaper, and in an attempt to prove his accusers wrong he set out on a course of action that amply illustrated his stubborn resolve and monstrous ego – as it was described in the civil case – but defied common sense.
Over the past 12 weeks the High Court in Glasgow heard that the real Sheridan was an adulterer and swinger who had a threesome with a party worker and his brother-in-law, made love to the same woman under his wedding photo in his marital bed, and enjoyed group sex at a seedy club and at a flat, in Manchester.
In both trials, Sheridan chose to sack his QC and defend himself. He has now dismissed three of Scotland's most respected defence lawyers – Richard Keen QC, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, Maggie Scott QC, known as the "Queen of the Appeal Court", and Donald Findlay QC, who has defended some of the country's most notorious killers.
The law student put in an impressive performance in the theatre of the highest criminal court, but he was fighting against the odds. The jury only had to believe two of the 180 witnesses to accept he had committed adultery and perjury.
The very first witness in the trial, Barbara Scott, 40, was the minute secretary who recorded his confession at the SSP meeting.
She was a bullish performer, bristling with barely concealed indignation. She noted down that the man she previously admired so much had admitted going to a swingers' club on two occasions.
And then there was the flame-haired Dane, Katrine Trolle, 36, the activist who saw Sheridan speak at a meeting in Aberdeen in 1996 and four years later began a four-year affair after leafleting with him in a Glasgow by-election.
She had nothing to gain by parading a series of sordid revelations in two Scottish courts.
And even with her confessions, the perjury trial was a "lite" version of his alleged misdemeanours. The libel case heard he was a cocaine-snorting, champagne swilling, four-times-a night man who took part in three, four and five-in-a-bed romps.
Not surprisingly, court No. 4 crackled with tension and barely-concealed loathing as he cross-examined his accusers.
The feud that split the SSP in the run-up to the civil case in 2006, led to former friends and colleagues giving evidence against him and loyal supporters appearing for him.
Crown witnesses were reduced to one-liners answers in response to his aggressive questioning.
Sheridan's distaste for his accusers was no more apparent than when he faced Bob Bird, the Scottish editor of the tabloid who faced the embarrassing revelation that he stripped to his boxer shorts to prove he was not wearing a wire before watching a secret videotape that showed the former MSP confessing to his sins.
Before the trial Sheridan was offered a deal in return for a guilty plea, which would have resulted in an 18-month sentence and his wife walking free. However he typically opted to fight instead.
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