Soap actor Mohammed George has been awarded £75,000 libel damages over a newspaper story he said wrongly accused him of acting like a wild animal and 'beating up' the mother of his daughter. The 26-year-old - who played roadsweeper Gus in EastEnders for more than five years - said after the verdict at the High Court in London he was 'ecstatic'. Mr George, who is known as Mo, sued over allegations in The Sun newspaper. During the action, which was contested by the tabloid's publisher, News Group Newspapers, Mr George's QC, Ronald Thwaites, said the actor's reputation had been 'seriously and unfairly damaged'. He told the court: "In a nutshell, the allegation against him is that he flew into a rage in the street in the early hours of the morning of December 3 2006, and beat up his then girlfriend and mother of his daughter, acting like a wild animal and leaving her sprawling in the street when he ran away." The 'completely untrue' allegation was that "he beats women, that he beats them mercilessly in the street" and that he "runs off like a coward". After the majority verdict, Mohammed, of Southgate, north London, said he was delighted the "shackles have been released from me and I no longer have this weight hanging over me and finally people will realise that what they wrote wasn't true". The actor said he hoped the jury's decision would mean work would start coming his way again and "people won't be afraid to cast me now". He said: "If I was a casting director I wouldn't want to cast someone who I thought was a wife beater." Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk’s new weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop Get all the latest soap gossip delivered straight to your door. Subscribe to Soaplife magazine today
