Tempers frayed in the opening hours of a Victorian Supreme Court case this morning as a lawyer representing Steve Vizard's former bookkeeper Roy Hilliard launched into a lengthy and devastating critique of the former television celebrity. Spinning and twisting to view a wall of journalists packed into the tiny courtroom, Peter Hayes QC, for Hilliard, repeatedly referred to Vizard's admissions last year that he had traded shares based on confidential boardrooom information. He described the former Telstra director as "an entirely manipulative and disreputable person", and said Vizard had secretly authorised his bookkeeper to write cheques totalling millions of dollars and to direct the money into a "secret cache" of cash. Mr Hayes made the same allegations in the County Court last year when Hilliard pleaded guilty to falsifying accounts.