Footballer who never was
IS THE LAW an ass, as maintained by Dickens character Sam Weller? The Brits seem to be trying their best to make it so. In recent times celebrities have taken to applying to court for injunctions against newspapers publishing details of their lurid love lives. The injunctions – "super-injunctions", as they have been dubbed – even forbid the newspapers, and other media such as television, reporting that the injunction has been applied for.
The latest injunction has been granted (or so we guess) to a nationally prominent footballer who is alleged to have had an affair with a reality television starlet. Nobody knows about it or the court application, of course – except that the thing has spread virally over Twitter and everyone who has any interest at all knows everything about it.
The footballer has now tried to come down on Twitter and its clients in terms of the injunction but, whether he succeeds or not, the cat is out of the bag.
The newspapers, radio and TV tell us all about the case – except they're still not allowed to name the footballer.
Now the Sunday Herald, in Scotland, has published a photograph of the footballer on its front page, arguing that the injunction was granted by an English court, while Scotland is a separate legal jurisdiction. Nobody applied to the Scottish courts for an injunction.
Now this latest development is on television and in the English newspapers – but still not the footballer's name or photograph.
Yes, the law is beginning to look a bit of an ass. Even Prime Minister David Cameron seems to think so.
Will the injunction now be dismissed by the courts as futile? Will the footballer withdraw his application seeing that everyone knows anyway? Will the English media be allowed to publish?
If only the issue were real, meaningful censorship; something a little more elevated than whether or not a celebrity footballer got his leg over a celebrity starlet. But such are the times we live in.
Publish, be damned!
IT'S DIFFICULT to tell from a distance whether or not the Sunday Herald actually published the name as well as the photograph of the footballer because TV zoom-ins on the newspaper's front page have all the detail blanked out. Injunctions, y'know. It seems not.
Which gives this column the opportunity to crash through this barrier of legally contrived censorship.
Step forward, footballer Mickey Mouse! Publish and be damned!
The Profumo case
THE ABOVE involves the individual's right to privacy, as against public interest. Many of us in the media side with the individual's right to privacy, and newspapers in this country mostly respect that right. It is only when private actions are to the detriment of the public interest that the public has a right to know.
But there's a confusion. Public interest does not necessarily mean something that will interest the public – secrets of the boudoir and that kind of thing.
The best example of public interest coinciding with what would interest the public was the Profumo case in Britain in the 60s.
John Profumo was Minister of War. He was sleeping with a callgirl named Christine Keeler. That was absolutely his own affair, not a matter of public interest.
But Christine Keeler was also sleeping with the Soviet naval attaché. This raised a security risk. This was a matter of real public interest.
And boy, were the public interested as the evidence came out in court! High society orgies, two-way mirrors, voyeurism. It led to the gag about Christine Keeler's newspaper order: Two Mirrors, six Observers, eight Spectators and as many Times as you like.
Tailpiece
THE IRISH computer virus: "Top o' de mornin to ya! My name is Paddy. Kindly pass dis e-mail on to everyone on yer e-mail, because in a few minutes you will no longer be able to share de virus wit yer friends. Now kindly delete all of yer documents. Next, format yer hard drive. Tank ya fer ya kind co-operation. Wishin ya a wonderfully lucky day!"
Last word
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
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