Am I Breaking A Superinjunction?

The idea that getting your lawyers to stop anyone talking about a past affair with Imogen Thomas, a former Miss Wales (might be a clue there, allegedly), may have seemed a good one at the time, but the whole business is getting silly. Anyone who wants to know the identity of the Premiership footballer concerned can find out, merely by doing a Google search and looking for auto-complete suggestions.

Actually, “suggestions” has a double G in it, which might be a little too close to revelation. Earlier today, Christian Wolmar joined in the fun by asking if he was breaking the injunction by saying “that the footballer’s first name is an airline, and the second rhymes with a common farm animal”, to which the obvious answer is that there isn’t a footballer called Monarch Howes.

There could be hours of allegedly harmless fun in this, especially watching all those newspapers that have eulogised over the player’s skill, achievements and longevity (is that on the pitch or elsewhere? Sorry, can’t tell you that) engaging reverse gear and denouncing him as a secretive love rat.

Maybe the injunction means that I can’t even discuss the Goon Show. Well, one particular episode of it, anyway: Six Charlies In Search Of An Author, in which several of the characters manage to wrest the typewriter from the author and begin to make the story up themselves, features a mythical author called Jim Spriggs.

Or perhaps it’s now forbidden to mention a legendary Welsh comedy series, especially the name of one of the two leads. And no derogatory reference to the Police featuring Neil from The Young Ones will be allowed, just in case anyone adds two and two and gets a result that puts them in contempt of court.

And what I definitely can’t mention is the Sunday Herald. That’s because this Scottish (and definitely not Welsh, Captain) paper allegedly put the player’s photo on yesterday’s front page with only a thin black line across the eyes. The defence being offered is that the injunction does not apply to Scotland. Perhaps. And it’s not Carlos Tevez or Craig Bellamy.

But seriously, this business shows that engaging the services of an old money sounding (allegedly) firm of legal eagles in today’s world is no more use than stopping up a dyke by putting your finger in it, not that any sexual orientation or preference should be implied by that wording, of course.

The rest of this post is now Sub Judice.