Entertainer Michael Barrymore is in line to receive a bumper pay out from Essex Police after the High Court in London backed his claim that the force destroyed his career. 

The TV comic, 65, sued Essex Police for £2.4million over his 2007 arrest on suspicion of the rape and murder of 31-year-old Stuart Lubbock, who was discovered face down in a swimming pool after a drugs-fuelled party hosted by Barrymore at his home in the village of Roydon, Essex, six years before. 

Mr Barrymore, who fronted hugely popular TV shows such as Strike It Lucky and My Kind Of People in the Eighties and Nineties, claimed his arrest over the death destroyed his glittering career.  

Essex Police had admitted the arrest was unlawful, as the arresting officer did not have reasonable grounds to suspect that Mr Barrymore was guilty.

But it said the TV presenter could have been lawfully arrested by another officer and that, as a result, he was only entitled to nominal damages of £1. 

However Mr Justice Stuart-Smith, sitting in London today, ruled against the force.  

The judge ruled there was 'information available to the police that could have provided an arresting officer with reasonable grounds for a lawful arrest'.

But he added that 'there was only one designated arresting officer who had sufficient information and had been sufficiently briefed to enable her to arrest Mr Parker [Mr Barrymore] lawfully'. Mr Justice Stuart-Smith said that arrest would also have been unlawful 'because none of the police officers at the scene had sufficient information or had been sufficiently briefed to enable them to arrest Mr Parker lawfully'. 

He added: 'Mr Parker is entitled to recover more than nominal damages.'  

Mr Barrymore, 65, who was not present for the decision, values his claim at more than £2.4 million. 

The judge did not decide on the sum to be awarded, as his ruling dealt only with the preliminary issue of the level of damages to be awarded to Mr Barrymore, who brought the action in his real name, Michael Ciaran Parker. Mr Lubbock's body was found in the pool after a party where drugs and alcohol were consumed.  

Barrymore was interviewed by police shortly afterwards but no further action was taken.

He was kept in a cell for 36 hours when he was arrested in 2007 but the case was dropped three months later. 

A post-mortem examination later revealed that he had suffered serious anal injuries.

An open verdict was recorded at an inquest in 2002 after a pathologist said there was no 'benign or accidental explanation' for Mr Lubbock's injuries. 

At the conclusion of Friday's announcement of his decision, the judge adjourned an application by the force for permission to appeal, which is now likely to be heard in October. 

The decision prompted a furious response from Mr Lubbock's father, Terry, who described the ruling on a legal technicality as a 'travesty of justice'. 

He said: 'Barrymore has won his case in court but it doesn't change what I think - that he knows more than he's ever let on.

'I've never accused him of being directly responsible for Stuart's death but I've maintained that my son was murdered and Barrymore could have helped the police a lot more to bring his killers to justice.