Sex, Lies and Gagging Orders

How much of a right do we have to know celebrities' most exciting

secrets? And how much should they be able to keep hidden? Revelations

about phone hacking and super- injunctions have made privacy big

news. So how would you feel if journalists hacked into your phone?

I felt scared of the News of the World for a long time actually.

felt very bullied by them. Or you had a famous lover who took out a

gagging order to keep you quiet? was being told that I was not

allowed to mention not just the existence of the injunction but the

existence of the relationship. it comes to privacy, do celebs get

what they deserve? Being a celebrity is a stupid job. We're

there to point that out to them. Or should their sex lives be strictly

off limits? Not only was my name all over the tabloids for sleeping

with Wayne Rooney but everyone found out what I done for a living.

It was awful. We'll met the journalists who'll stop at nothing

to get a story. I don't care. never thought phone hacking was a

bad thing to do. I reckon 10% of the British population have done it.

And the public who can't wait to read them. I love catching up on

the gossip. You don't actually read them though. You just look at the

pictures. This is how gossip got Every week we Brits spend millions

of pounds on newspapers and magazines to find out what

scandalous high jinx our favourite celebs have been involved in. We're

addicted to gossip and we don't care who knows it. My name is Sam

Delaney and I love gossip. In fact, as a former editor of Heat magazine,

I used to make a living out of the stuff. I've always thought of

gossip as a pretty innocent word. You know, who's dating who, who

might be splitting up, who got a daft new haircut. That's the kind

of gossip that sells. But recently there have been signs that gossip

could be mutating into something darker and a bit more dangerous.

It's been a summer of celebrity sleaze as stories of phone hacking

and super-injunctions have dominated the headlines. Both those

stories had one thing in common - the right to privacy. The hacking

scandal was about people whose privacy had been invaded, while the

stars taking out injunctions were fighting to get theirs back. There

was uproar when journalists went too far to bring us the gossip but

equally we weren't happy when the courts banned them from telling us

the juicy bits. So how much privacy do the famous really deserve?

there is no distinction between mugging someone for a wallet or

their watch and selling it on the street, and mugging them for their

privacy and selling it in a newspaper. But like any drug, as

long as there's people out there willing to pay for gossip, there

will be people who find a way to sell it. I read gossip magazines.

read gossip websites. You might not do. I don't. But at the end of the

day, it's almost like an addiction. I think people think they can be

vicious about celebrities because it's not directly affecting them.

You would never be that vicious about someone you knew. You don't

sit and bitch about how your friends look, do you? He actually

does. Now, when I was an editor, I had to ask myself daily questions

about which celebrity stories we could justify publishing and which

were just too much of an invasion of their privacy. Some people now

claim that there's no privacy left and that the gossip business is

completely out of control. Digging up scandal has never been easy. You

can't just pick up the phone to a celeb and make polite enquiries

about their sex life, hoping for full and frank answers. Sneaking

about a bit and poking your nose where it's not wanted has always

been a legitimate part of a journalist's job. But it's now

become clear that some News of the World journalists cut one corner

too many, by illegally listening in to other people's voicemails.

Celebrities including Hugh Grant, Jude Law, Sienna Miller and Wayne

Rooney are all believed to have been targeted. More possible

victims are revealed on a regular basis. Among them, original queen

of the lads' mags, Abi Titmuss. Abi Titmuss was one of the first of a

modern gaggle of celebrities who are famous just for being famous

really. She was known more for who she was rather than anything she'd

done. There's been plenty more since, but Abi really had to learn

on the job and she soon discovered that sacrificing part of her

privacy was the price she had to pay for fame. I knew for years that

they were hacking my phone, my voicemail, which basically means

there were people ringing my voicemail, listening to my messages

before I'd listened to them, deleting them sometimes. This went

on for a long period of time and I knew it was happening. I'd ring it

and it would say, "Your voicemail is currently in use. Sorry, please

try again later." Someone was actually listening to it the same

time I was ringing it. Did friends think you were being paranoid and

that fame was driving you a bit crazy? I remember a story that

appeared in the paper that was a direct transcript of a conversation

I had with a friend. 'Abi confides in friend' was the headline. My

friend called me then and said, "I'm really sorry for doubting they

were doing this to you. "She was really upset. She could see it in

black and white, this is what they had done. This was no surprise to

me at all. Like many other celebrities who claim their phone

was hacked, Abi is now suing the publishers of the News of the World.

Are you still angry or vengeful? don't feel angry or vengeful...

Actually that's not true. I do feel a bit angry. I think I felt scared

of News of the World for a long time actually. I felt very bullied

by them. At other times I had a great relationship with them and it

was trying to keep the enemy onside in a weird way. I never quite knew

where I was with them. We both made each other money but then they go,

"Well, we've done that. We've paid you but we're also going to follow

you. We're going to stalk you, we're going to hack your phone,

we're going to invade your privacy. We're going to follow your family.

There can't be many people who agree that celebrities deserve to

have their phones hacked. However I have found one man who does think

that. I'm on my way to meet him now. He thinks that phone hacking is

brilliant. Are you questioning what you do now more than you did in the

past? I've always said that I've tried to write articles in a

truthful way. You know, what better source of getting the trith than

listening to someone's messages? You're not uncovering corruption.

You're just trying to find out who's sleeping with who. Paul

McMullen is the former News of the World reporter who made a name for

himself this year by being pretty much the only person in the country

who was ready to stand up and defend the phone hacking methods

used against celebrities. Did you feel in your time as a reporter

that there was an ever-increasing pressure to get bigger, more

The idea in the News of the World is to set the news agenda. It's the

biggest paper in the world apart from one in China and we tried to

be the thing everyone was talking about on Sunday and Monday and

Tuesday. So if it was the World Cup, we needed to turn over a footballer.

If it was the rugby, we needed to get a rugby player. You were paid a

lot of money to be the best and to not fail and get a result at all

costs. That high-pressure atmosphere is presumably what leads

you into doing things like phone tapping etc? Yeah, you could argue

that. It seems like a bit of an excuse to me. It's more just I was

a professional journalist and I wanted to get the best story I

could. My justification is that we caught politicians who were

fiddling their expenses, fiddling with their secretaries, saying,

"Vote for me. I'm a happily married family man." Kylie Minogue, Hugh

Grant, Steve Coogan, they are the justifiable victims in having a

free press and a decent democracy. Paul's fondness for phone hacking

was exposed somewhat randomly by the actor Hugh Grant, who'd

secretly recorded a conversation in which Paul brazenly banged on about

the way in which celeb voicemails were hacked at the News of the

World. He started boasting about how my phone had been hacked and

all of the dirtiest tactics of the News of the World. He went and gave

that tape of me confessing, really for the first time, to the cops and

put it on the internet, wrote about it in a magazine, and all of a

sudden Hugh Grant jumped on the phone hacking story and everyone

around the world started talking about it. Well, you've got to

admire him though. He brought a big story to mass public attention.

don't care. I never thought phone hacking was a bad thing to do. I

reckon 10% of the British population have done it. You've

probably done it to your own girlfriend. Why's she staying out

late on a Saturday night? I'll have a quick listen. Or maybe she's done

it to you. Allegations of phone hacking first started knocking

around in 2005. But while certain papers and media pundits took an

interest, the general public didn't seem that bothered about the odd

celeb having their phone calls listened to. No one's got any

sympathy with them cos they all make so much money anyway and

they've all got publicists. It was nonsense. Half the stuff is

celebrities just desperate to get in a newspaper that 10 million

people read and 10 million people might go and buy Katie Price's new

book. But the public's attitude to phone hacking changed in July this

year, when it emerged that it wasn't just celebrities being

targeted. In 2002, the phone of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler

had also been hacked by private detectives working for the News of

the World. Even for Paul, that was a step too far. This is where the

victims are not just Hugh Grant and silly celebrities. This is where it

is really hard to defend. The private eye went too far. He hacked

into Milly Dowler's own phone. The mail box was full. He deleted a

couple of messages to get new ones in and it looked like the phone

came back to life for five minutes. The parents are thinking, "Her

phone's back on!" I mean, I'm a parent myself. I cant imagine

anything worse, can you? Then you find out there is a private eye

listening in to your dead daughter's messages. That's what

changed everything. That's what closed the News of the World and

now we find people have done that same technique to victims of 7/7

and possibly even 9/11. You said earlier that you felt you would

stop at nothing to bring in a story. What was your attitude to ordinary

members of the public'? Well, fundamentally they're not

interesting. We don't care about Bob the dustman or Frank the

builder. People are more interested in you if you're rich. After the

revelations about Milly Dowler, the public's attitude seemed to change

immediately. Pressure piled onto the News of the World to such an

extent that publishers News International shut the whole

newspaper down for good. And all of a sudden, everyone had an opinion

on phone hacking. I wouldn't want my answer phone messages to be

listened to, but I don't think it's as big a deal as the celebrities

are making out. I'd really like to know what they got from their

answer phone messages as well, because mine are just like, "Will

you call me back please?" Mine are, "Call me." Would you listen to your

boyfriend's messages? Let's not answer that one. You have! And so

have I. Yeah, I have been caught listening to my partner's messages

a couple of times. Many editors would argue that they only carry

the stories that the public want to read. Let's be honest, the News of

the World was the best-selling paper in the country for many years,

not for the quality of its TV listings, but because of the

salacious celebrity gossip it carried. So in a sense, aren't any

of us who ever picked up a copy to read the latest scandal complicit

in this whole problem? One man at the heart of just about every major

celebrity story is PR king Max Clifford. When a showbiz scandal

breaks in the press, there's a good chance he's involved in it

somewhere down the line. Hello. I'm Sam Delaney. I'm here to see Max.

OK. Do you think the British public are in any way hypocritical because

they lap these gossipy stories up and they don't question how the

journalists get these stories until such a time like recently they

realised those same tactics can be used on ordinary Joe Public, at

which point they're up in arms? Yeah, I think there's a certain

amount of double standards, but that's mainly out of ignorance. You

know, once they realised what had happened to Milly Dowler, they were

generally appalled and upset. I don't think they would have felt

the same way if it had been a star. You obviously found out your phone

had been hacked and people had listened into your calls. How do

you feel towards the News of the World now? It was horrible to find

out that had happened. But I suppose you had to look logically

and think I'm a prime target. So you know, was I angry? Was I upset?

Yes, I was, and I was the only person that took them on legally

and pursued them legally until they apologised and admitted what had

gone on and we moved on. Max might be pretty rational about his

privacy being invaded by the press but it's unlikely that many of his

clients would feel the same way. So what do you feel about celebrities

who moan about invasion of privacy? I always say the same thing. If you

use the media you can't be too upset when they use you. But of

course again it depends on the degree. So if you're an actor who

claims, "Well, I just act. I'm not out there trying to flog myself in

any other capacity. I go and make my films and then I go home and

spend time with my family. "Then you would say someone like that is

not such fair game. I think he or she deserves far greater protection,

understanding, consideration than someone who flaunts, uses the media

all the time, that sells themselves and their family all the time to

promote them, their career, their So, do some celebrities deserve

more privacy than others? And if they do, where do we draw the line?

How do we in the press decide which ones are fair game and which ones

get left alone? I've always agreed with celebrities when they've said

they deserve a certain amount of privacy in their lives. Of course

they do. After all, they're just human beings like the rest of us,

Abi Titmuss shot to fame after her partner John Lesley was falsely

accused of rate. Whilst the trial damaged Lesley's Korea it made her

a star overnight. I did a picture for FHM in a bikini for a bit of

fun. That whole shoot I did, they rang me and said we are going to

put you on the cover and it's going to be 10 pages. I was like what? I

thought they were making a horrible mistake. I cried when I first saw

the cover. I wasn't joyous. cried because you were embarrassed?

It was such a shock to see myself on the cover of this magazine with

no clothes on. Abi soon became the highest earning glamour model in

the country, reportedly going on to make a million quid for appearing

in a shed load of exotic snaps. The price she paid was her privacy. The

public wanted to know more about this saucy nurse and the tabloids

were going to tell them. They were just on me. There were

photographers outside my house every day, they followed me

everywhere, they were outside my parents' house. They would get

really upset. My mum put a sign on the front door saying please stop

ringing the doorbell, we're not going to talk to anybody. My best

friend from school sold a story on me, apparently got a new car out of

it. It was absolute total rubbish. So the great disparity of the image

of me in the paper and the person I was, that became very distressing.

At the height of her fame nothing in Abi's private life was sacred.

She even suffered the ultimate embarrassment of having a sex tape

stolen and leaked on the internet.. There are certain things that have

happened to me that were gross invasions of my privacy that I

would do anything to get back and to change. But I'm never going to

be able to do that. I'm trying very hard now to get my privacy back and

just focus on the job I'm doing. course, all celebs choose to be in

the public eye and Abi has proved they can also choose to step out of

it as well. And so we go for a coffee. Not MacDonalds, Danny's,

because that's what he suggests. When she'd have enough of the celeb

lifestyle she turned her back on it and retrained as an actress. Now

you're more likely to see her on stage than on the front of a

tabloid. What about the people who will say you chose to be in the

public eye, you made a lot of money out of that, therefore, you have to

stomach the intrusions you get from the press? Being in the public eye

doesn't necessarily warrant press invasion to the point where they're

upsetting your families, printing things about your personal life

that may be true, or not. I think there are boundaries. You can

expect press intrusion, of course, but there are boundaries where that

And these boundaries are stretched further with the ever-increasing

dominance of the internet. In recent years a bunch of celebrity

gossip websites have appeared, feeding our hunger for the latest

showbiz news 24/7. Leading the pack is gossip site Holy Moly. Jamie.

Sam, how are you? Good to see you. This is your nerve centre? Welcome

to the epicentre of celebrity gossip. Often controversial and

unashamedly harsh the Holy Moly writers aren't afraid of giving

celebs a good kicking once in a while. When your site started it

seemed to push the boundaries more. The byline of Holy Moly is always

to remind celebrities that being a celebrity is a stupid job. We are

there to point it out to them. We like celebrities but we like the

ones that are good at something. So you can have an amazing actor,

musician, writer, comedian, they're good celebrities because they are

celebrities off the back of having a talent and having worked hard.

Then you get raucous vacuums like Kerry Katona, or Katie Price, who

just aren't anything apart from a brand. So I like to remind them of

that on a daily basis. Jude Law recently came out and said look,

I'm just an actor, why do we have to be lumped in as a celebrity? Why

has anybody got any interest in my private life? He has been thrust in

tabloid hell because of the things he has done, whether it is his

child eating a pill on the floor of a kids' party, whether it is

sleeping with your nanny, or going out with Sienna Miller.

celebrities who go to magazines like your Hellos, or your OK!s

those mags who buy out big deals of people's wedding photos and the

first pictures of their children, haven't they basically sold their

souls? Once you've done something like that it's hard to argue you

want to retain privacy. But they offer so much money for these

things and there is a fallacy that all celebrities are loaded. The

majority of them are skint. You know that as well as I do. When you

get sued you never get sued by the the Brad Pitts, the Julia Roberts,

the Angelina Jolies. You get sued by the people that need a couple of

grand to pay the rent. Well, not always. Man United defender Rio

Ferdinand, who is not short of cash, recently sued the Sunday Mirror for

running a largely ignored kiss-and- tell story about an alleged on-off

affair lasting 13 years. He argued that just because he's a footballer

does not mean we have the right to know about his private life. But

the newspaper's legal team fought back by reporting the names of nine

other women he'd supposedly had relationships with. So what is it

with footballers? Footballers are generally as thick as pig shit,

they are given more money than the majority of us could ever dream of

They are pretty much left to get on with it. It is a recipe for

disaster. There are plenty of footballers who want the fame on

the pitch, the money, the sponsorship, but they also want to

go out four nights a week, shag around, smoke a load of fags and

then act incredulous that anyone's interested in that. I would say the

footballers even more than regular celebrities have more

responsibility not to behave like they do because of the amount of

young people that do look up to them. They are supposed be

But what about the non-famous people? Or normals, as I call them,

who get caught up in these soccer scandals. Did they deserve to have

their lives intruded into in such a way? Take former escort girl Helen

Wood, when she was exposed for allegedly sleeping with Wayne

Rooney, her life was changed forever. I wanted to die when it

all came out. It was like literally I wanted the floor to swallow me up.

It was horrendous. Not only was my name all over the tabloids for

sleeping with Wayne Rooney but naturally the more scary thing for

me was everyone found out what I'd done for a living and it was awful.

How did you get into being an escort? A few things got out of

hand, I started living life beyond my means and I kind of saw it as

the answer to all my prayers. I didn't in a million years think

that one day I'd have to sit down and explain why I ended up in this

predicament because I thought it would always remain quiet.

according to Helen a chance meeting with Wayne Rooney in 2009 ended any

hope of that. Wayne Rooney got in touch and obviously the threesome

took place and then that was it after that. I thought I wouldn't

hear anything else about it, we all agreed to keep it quiet and

unfortunately the other girl that was involved decided to tell a few

people round our area and it just So surely in your business that is

the cardinal sin, the one thing you never do? Well, yeah, that's what

we agreed. He obviously believed we wouldn't tell anybody as well.

a year later amidst all the publicity surrounding the World Cup

the other girl sold her story to the press. After being exposed as

being a prostitute and with nothing left to lose Helen gave in and sold

her version of events. People often look at girls who sell their story,

do kiss-and-tells and think they are cashing in. That used to be my

opinion. Until last year, if I saw a girl selling a story on a

footballer, or actor because she slept with him I would be like,

"What a gold digger, what a tramp". But then the newspaper don't write

"we actually followed her around, pushed her into a corner and kind

of bullied her into selling her story". That's the truth. The media

basically say to you, we know it's you, so we can still print your

name. So you either come on board, we pay you, or you deny, deny, deny,

even though we have substantial evidence, you are going to say if

you can print my name, well, I'll Who the hell wouldn't? I suppose

the problem is you will always be labelled as a former prostitute?

I'm never going to get away from that. The only thing that affects

me is the people I love and that's it. So for someone to call me a

prostitute, hooker, a slag, gold- digger, it doesn't bother me. It

wasn't me that sold the story in the first place. It also wasn't me

Way before phone hacking celebs lived with the press following

their every move through more traditional methods including the

press photographers, or paparazzi, who grabbed those eternally popular

shots of the rich and famous out on the street pretending to be normal.

Some celebs tolerate them, many hate them, some secretly love them

but they are the lifeblood of many So I might have bought a lot of

paparazzi shots before of celebrities stumbling out of bars

and restaurants drunk, making fools of themselves but I have never

actually been on the front line and seen how the snaps are taken.

Tonight is the night I find out. Wayne Buckland is a freelance

photographer who has been part of the paparazzi for eight years and

tonight he is allowing me to ride shotgun as he tries to get that one

killer shot which could pay his rent for a month. Hello. How are

you doing? Not bad. Thanks for letting me tag along. Not a problem.

It will be fun. What are we going to do now? Find some nightclubs,

hopefully see some celebrities. Keeping an eye out for a lovely

shiny famous face we saunter the streets of London's West End before

heading to Soho, an area rich with the sort of fancy pants members'

clubs popular with celebs. There you go, there's Cumberbatch. And

he's with Tom Stoppard. That is a great shot. Brilliantly, as soon as

we arrive, Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch is stood outside one

such hot spot in the company of legendary playwright Tom Stoppard.

Cheers guys. Everyone loves a bit of Cumberbatch. See, I am a lucky

charm. Well spotted. Come out with me more often. Cumberbatch has

broad appeal because I know magazines like Heat will like him

because all girls have got a weird crush on him. Then you've got

Stoppard, very highbrow, you might get that in a broadsheet newspaper

and a gossip magazine. It's the shot that's got it all. Fingers

crossed. Tell you what, give us 10 per cent! What has been your career

best image? What made you the most money? The first picture of Brad

Pitt and Angelina holding hands, that was a nice picture. Where was

that? Heathrow airport. Brad Pitt gave a wink and smiled, they both

looked back slightly, a nice easy picture. Of course, some

celebrities don't respond to the paps in such a friendly way but if

they don't like the attention couldn't they just go down their

local pub and avoid the kind of know they are likely to be snapped?

What do you think about privacy? What level of privacy do you think

celebrities around and about town deserve? They're on TV, in the

limelight, people pay to watch them, people want to see more of them.

They can't have it on their terms. But they would argue people want to

see us on TV, that's when we make the choice to go into the public

eye but if I'm going out for dinner with my mates why should I have a

lens stuck in my face when I leave a restaurant? It doesn't work like

that, it has never worked like that. Once they're in the public eye the

public want to see them when they want to see them, they want to see

the nitty gritty, the drunken episodes. They can't pick one

without the other. After a couple of hours trawling around Soho

looking for celebs I've realised the life of a pap can be pretty

frustrating. I've had a lovely night, it's been lovely chatting to

you but it's late, I'm cold, I want my dinner. I'm going to leave you

to it. Hope it goes well. It's been fun. Good night. See you. You know

what, I quite enjoyed my night out as a pap assistant but I suppose

normal photographers out on the streets aren't as nice as Wayne, in

fact, some people tell me it's like the Wild West out there. I'm off

now to meet a guy who will tell me Trevor Adams runs Matrix Pictures,

an agency representing photographers such as Wayne, they

are responsible for brokering deals with all the tabloids and celebrity

Nice to see you. Good to meet you because we have never met face to

face. But we have done a lot of business. Some of the biggest

selling pictures in recent years have actually been taken by members

of the public that happen to be in the right place at the right time

with their camera phone. There was a famous picture that made a great

magazine cover of Cheryl Cole and Ashley Cole having crisis talks in

a pub beer garden over egg and chips. I remember that picture.

Somebody looked down on them from the terrace or something. Yes,

somebody to base that on his own over a fence and it sold thousands

of copies for Heat. If you had that picture today, it would be worth a

fortune. Her magazine deal, foreign sales, you could top 100 grand with

that picture. With those financial rewards available to photographers,

it is easy to see why the industry has become so competitive, leaving

an army for photographers. We get pictures of the time that have

clearly been unethical. Maybe trespass, through somebody's front

window. You cannot risk dealing with those pictures. Have you ever

personally come into direct confrontation with celebrities over

some of the images that you have got of them and distributed? What

happens quite a lot now is that some law firms actually team up

with the celebrities and say, "See this picture that was published? We

believe that you could bring a case against the person who took that

picture, so would you like us to take it up?" More often than not,

nothing comes of it but the celebrity ends up with a legal bill.

And you do get a lot of expensive- looking letters that often fizzle

out into nothing. Cheryl Cole spends a fortune on lawyers just

because she doesn't like photographers camped in her road.

But quite often when it's happening she'll have her legal team warning

them to stay away. Essentially nobody is breaking any law, nobody

is doing anything wrong, but her When amateur photographers over-

stepped the mark and tried to take pictures on her property, Cheryl

took out an injunction to stop them. Lily Allen and the late Amy

Winehouse also took similar action when they thought that snappers

were getting too close for comfort. So it's not completely lawless out

there. The law is there to protect Since the phone hacking allegations,

big name stars are queuing up to sue the News of the World, but

that's nothing new. Celebrities have been trying to take on the

press for years, very often in the High Court here in London. It was

only in 1998 when British law incorporated the European Human

Rights Act that for the first time we all got specific legal rights to

keep our private lives private. That might not affect either you or

me on a day-to-day basis, but for celebrities it changed everything,

making it much easier for them to take on the media when they feel

that their private lives were being intruded upon unfairly. Suing a

newspaper after they've already published a story on you is one

thing, but ideally, if you are a celebrity with something to hide,

what you really want to do is stop that story ever coming out in the

first place. Which of course you can attempt to do nowadays with the

magic of the super-injunction. A super-injunction refers to a type

of gagging order that's so restrictive it can't even be

reported that it exists. The first time most of us heard the term was

last year when John Terry got one to try and stop a story about an

alleged affair. Now, super- injunction is a term that's been

bandied about a lot over the past year but in actual fact, there's

only been two granted since John Terry's. One of those was for

Howard Donald. You know, Howard Donald, out of Take That. Never

forget where you're coming from. Howard Donald had an on-off affair

with Adakini Ntuli for almost nine years and after a messy split, took

out a super-injunction to stop her from selling the details of their

relationship to the press. She says she never intended to sell her

story, and that the super- injunction left her scared to even

discuss the matter, until now. hear the word super-injunction

thrown about. You kind of know they exist but you don't know what they

are and what they mean, or anything at all. Then all of a sudden you've

got this thing being put on you. Mine was very severe in that I was

being told that I was not allowed to mention not just the existence

of the injunction but the existence of the relationship that I'd been

in for a large part of my life, otherwise it was a prisonable

offence. So I felt very strongly I had to do something about that.

Adakini recruited a lawyer who eventually was able to convince a

judge to relax some of the terms of Howard's injunction. This means she

can now legally discuss the existence of the relationship,

without discussing any of the actual details of her time with

Howard. I have no control over how I'm portrayed. I have no voice. I'm

not able to explain myself, explain my situation, but on the other hand,

he is fully able to have me portrayed however he wants. Surely

famous people in certain instances should have the right to protect

their privacy and the details of their private life, right? Before

any of this happened and you were in your relationship with Howard,

you must have seen things a very different way? Everybody has a

right to privacy, of course they do. But when a super-injunction is put

in place because the person is basically just trying to hide their

indiscretions... What it's about for me is that my name has been

dragged through the dirt. Ive been wrongly portrayed. I would like to

have the freedom of speech to be able, if I wanted to, tell things

as they actually were to set the record straight. I'm not in a

position where I can do that. As celebrities run round desperately

trying to stop the public finding out the often bizarre details of

their sex lives, the number of privacy cases going to court has

soared. In most cases, the big names aren't actually going for a

super-injunction, they're trying for your more bog-standard one,

where the press can report there's one in place just not who's taken

it out. And a lot of their gagging orders have been successful, which

is why I can't tell you for instance the name of the actor

who's been bombarding a single mum with sexy text messages, emails and

tweets for a year. Or the TV celebrity who's trying to stop his

wife from publishing a book about their sex lives. And we can't tell

you the name of the married Premier League footballer said to have had

an affair with an aspiring lingerie model. But we can tell you hers.

It's Kimberley West. Action. Good. Hi, Kimberley. I'm Sam. Hi. Nice to

meet you. How are you doing? I'm good, thanks. Good. Kimberley met

the footballer in a nightclub and says they had a relationship for

the next six months. Wow, was it quite serious what you had with

him? We used to go out for meals, used to go and get DVDs and watch

them together. It felt like it was leading on to something. He even

said, "This could be the start of something cos I really like you,

Kim ." I was like, "Oh, my God. He's saying this about me. Wow."

Obviously because I'm only 18. What 18 year old wouldn't be flattered?

And then you found out he was married? Usually when someone asks

you on a date you assume they're single. So he was a guy living a

double life really. Basically, yeah. So how did you feel when you found

out? I felt really hurt and annoyed and quite angry. Sort of a mix of

emotions really. Just the fact that he's taken advantage of me for six

Hurt and upset, Kimberley approached The Sun and told them

every detail of their alleged affair. So when you went to the

papers were you worried about how you might come across in a story

like this? I thought I'd be judged. Like, "Who does she think she is?"

I knew there would be both positive and negative feedback from it but

in the end I just thought I've got nothing to lose because I haven't

done anything wrong. And did they offer you money for it. They did,

yeah. And was that part of the motivation? They were paying you a

decent some of money? That wasn't it at all. The whole point was that

I wanted to get him named and shamed for the person he really is.

However, as soon the player heard that he was to be identified in The

Sun, he called in the lawyers. They won an injunction, stopping the

story from being published. I felt really angry, how the fact that

he's a famous footballer and he can hide behind his lawyers. All he has

to do is cough up money and that's it. You know, no-one needs to know

he's been having an affair for six months. It's hard to know who to

feel sorry for. Obviously Kimberly feels betrayed but is it fair on

the footballer to have all of this messy business aired in public?

Kimberley, a lot of people will say that this is something that took

place between you and him. Does that mean it should all be dragged

through the papers? He didn't have the decency to own up or apologise,

you know. He carried on lying throughout. That's why I chose to

go down that road. So this is still a secret right now. If you said his

name to me right now we'd probably both be in big trouble. Oh, we

would, yeah. What would you do now if a footballer, even if he was

really really hot, asked you for your number in a nightclub? I'd be

like, "Mate, don't even go there." What about if it was David Beckham?

Of course, Kimberly isn't the only woman this summer who found herself

at the heart of an injunction after an affair with a Premier League

footballer. There's one story no- one can have missed. The story is a

simple one. Footballer meets reality star, they allegedly have

an affair lasting six months, The Sun newspaper find out but the

footballer takes out a gagging order which prevents the Sun or

anyone else ever discussing any of it. Ever. But due to what can only

be described as an unfortunate series of events, it didn't work

and soon all of the tawdry details of his love life had spilled out on

the internet for all of us to read about. How very disappointing. And

not what anyone involved had wanted. As soon as former Big Brother star

Imogen Thomas heard that The Sun had discovered details of the

affair, she approached the godfather of public relations,

asking for advice. Because if there's one man who knows how to

bury a story, it's Max Clifford. Imogen Thomas came to see me to

tell me about her relationship with a famous footballer. Right, "Do you

want to bring out the story?" "No, I don't. I don't want anybody

knowing but the Sun newspaper have approached me. They say that they

can prove it so I've got to talk to them. Will you look after me?" I

contacted the Sun, spoke to the people at the top there. They

didn't have enough evidence so it wouldn't come out. I said to Imogen,

"Say nothing, keep your head down. Anybody calls you, refer them to me.

It won't come out. Phone the famous footballer and warn him what's

going on and tell him to keep his head down and say nothing. As long

as he does that it won't come out." The famous footballer decided not

to take that advice. Had he taken that advice, no one would have

known about the alleged relationship and a subsequent

We all know who this footballer is but we can't say his name out loud

because of the injunction, which I find amazing. He's not preventing

his identity or his privacy any more. All he's really doing is

stopping us from having a nice gossip about it all. What a

spoilsport. The story was a tabloid editor's dream, but the

restrictions of the injunction put the press in a difficult position.

Like many journalists, Elisa Roche, had to navigate her way through a

baffling legal minefield in order to work out what could and couldn't

be reported. Let's talk about the Imogen Thomas story. We cannot name

the footballer involved. I wonder who it was?! I am sure some people

have gathered who it was. But the Imogen Thomas story ran and ran,

the biggest story of this year. It was perfect, it had all of the

elements. Why was it so perfect for journalists? At the time of Fleet

Street finding out who this footballer was, we also started to

find out about lots of other footballers and people in positions

of power and famous people that had also been sleeping around behind

partner's backs and with prostitutes and whatever else.

There was this raft of injunctions propping up at the same time, which

was intriguing but also frustrating. On Fleet Street we knew who they

were but we were handcuffed and could not publish it because we

could get sued. What made it great was the fact the footballer could

not be named. The guessing game gives the story real legs.

Absolutely. But that is always to see but there is nothing worse than

feeling that you are being kept out of a secret. You start speculating.

You wonder who it could be, your mate says it could be so and so. It

fuels the fire and everybody wants to know who it is. It is the same

for Fleet Street. What seemed particularly strained was that

while nobody could then the football in the story, everybody

knew who the other half in the affair was. Imogen Thomas was the

focus of the attire scandal. What do you think about the way the

women in these stories are betrayed by us in the press? The guide moves

on. -- the man moved on. Footballers can afford to protect

their identity. I think there is an inherent sexism in these cases. The

women cannot afford to put his super-injunction on their own name.

I felt sorry for Imogen Thomas. She could not protect her name. She was

genuinely distressed. People would say that she was milking it but she

was. She had paparazzi following her everywhere. At the end of the

day she has done well out of it but I felt sorry for her at the time.

don't give a toss what the celebrities are doing. I feel sorry

for the footballer. She is willing to lie on her back, isn't she?

about Beckham. I don't think he did it. If I had slept with that Imogen

Thomas, I would have told my mates. And my mother. Your mother! I would

not be bothered going to the Legally, the media could only refer

to the famous footballer by three randomly chosen letters used to

keep his identity secret. But because the pan with public were in

luck. Within hours of the injunction being awarded, clues to

his identity were posted online. And this man was among the first to

put them there. A former press photographer, he now runs a

celebrity gossip website. Nice to Once we'd had a phone call telling

us who CTB was, I wanted that story on my website. Because you knew the

amount of attention it would generate. It was a shocking

shocking revelation I was truly shocked I truly was. Knowing he had

a huge scoop on his hands, and desperate to publish before anyone

else, Mike consulted his lawyers about what he could and more

importantly couldn't reveal. Eventually they agreed that he

could post clues to the footballer's identity but could not

name him. The advice we got wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear but

it was that whatever you write it has to pass a reasonable person's

test. Can a reasonable person immediately guess from your clues

the identity of this person? The answer was no. It was "who shot

JR?" in real life "who shagged Imogen Thomas?" You could put it

that way yes. Mike took the gamble and posted his story naming CTB's

country of birth, and revealing that he plays for a big Premier

League club. Once you know the answer to a crossword its very easy

to put all the letters into all the boxes its very very simple.# the

fact is people didn't know and 99 percent of people got it wrong' 99

percent of people got it wrong after you had said who else do you

know who is welsh' There was no end of different names you got to

remember a lot of people who were making these guesses were female

they weren't necessarily people that followed football and that's

90 percent of my readers' But that was still enough for people to very

quickly deduce what it was right so really you were breaking the

injunction' Well that's a very mute point a very grey area our advice

was that we weren't. So if anyone comes at you and says what

reasonable persons your clues were too explicit then you can say well

clearly they weren't cos 99 percent of people got it wrong? Exactly.

You must have had moments when you thought I shouldn't have done this

I've started something too big here. I don't think I feel quite like

that, it was a risk yes and I still if you asked me would I do it again

yes I would even knowing what I know now yes I would. Well Mike

sums it up really well when someone, anyone, has a nugget of pure solid

gold gossip they just can't keep their mouths shut about it,

difference is that in the old days with a bit of gossip like that, you

might tell a few people down the pub. Now you can spread it to

millions across the world in a matter of moments thanks a lot

Twitter. The usual rules of privacy don't seem to apply online,

especially on Twitter. To find out why I'm off to my first tweet-up.

This is basically an excuse for a booze-up, where people who have met

each other on the social networking site, actually meet face to face

over glasses of alcohol. The biggest moment for Twitter was when

everyone wanted to find out who Imogen Thomas had been shagging.

Would you say that gossip is the most valuable type of currency on a

social network like Twitter? It's probably the biggest one and that's

why the biggest people on Twitter are the celebrities. People have

realized that it's an amazing platform for hearing all the best

gossip. I mean for the first time ever fans have a direct channel to

communicate with their heroes and to really get the raw thoughts

coming out of their head. So it's a level of access these people have

never had before. The name of Imogen's Premier League lover was

reposted by thousands of gossip- hungry Twitter users, giving the

site what was at the time, its busiest day ever. With little

thought about the privacy implications, they also revealed

the names of other celebrities who'd taken out injunctions to keep

their secrets hidden. Unfortunately, they didn't always get it right.

One post inaccurately claimed that Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson had an

injunction preventing the publication of intimate photographs

of him and journalist Jemima Khan. Unsurprisingly, Khan didn't waste

time in taking to Twitter to deny it. Falsehoods and conjecture can

very quickly take on the appearance of fact as well can't they and

that's the scary thing about twitter. What's said can't be

unsaid on Twitter can it? Absolutely, it's the same with

anything on the internet. Once it's out there or it's been cached by

google, copied by someone else you know, its very hard to take back

and Twitter just amplifies that. So once information is out there you

really can't hold it back. By now Twitter was on fire. Details of

celebrities and their injunctions were being tweeted and retweeted

every day some even featuring links to the actual court papers for each

case. Again, not all of them were accurate there was one tweet

falsely claiming that BBC presenter Gaby Logan had been having an

affair with Alan Shearer for instance. However there was name

that stood out on the list as vaguely familiar. That of former

escort girl Helen Wood. Already notorious after stories about that

threesome, Helen found herself publicly identified as having

carried out an eye watering sex act on another celebrity client.

Needless to say, the actor had taken out an injunction to keep it

quiet. Well, it still baffles me why he got one because it wasn't

even going to come out in a million years. I wasn't gonna sell a story

on him. Did you know who he was even when you saw him? Not straight

away I didn't, and even when the Rooney thing came out, it didn't

even come into my head that it might come out about him. There was

like other footballers and whatever that I thought oh God what if they

find out about them? He was like the last person in a million years

that I thought the press would have got wind of. When did you hear that

he had taken out an injunction? day that the injunction came out I

got a phone call off a journalist and I got a phone call off a family

member saying are you aware what's all over the internet. As soon as I

got wind of that I started having a panic attack, I was really upset.

Do you think that by doing that, he made the story worse because as a

result of that you ended up selling your story and all of the gory

details came out. Well yeah, because he wasted however much

money on an injunction and it completely spiraled out of control

for him. He's obviously been led to believe that his name could be

protected, but I think it's ended up a hell of a lot worse. Did you

end up thinking really you have to have money to afford privacy.

do, that's a fact, you do need money otherwise why didn't I get an

injunction. On two occasions now its not been an option for me

because I don't have 50 grand that's why. So called CTB may now

wonder if the money he spent on his injunction was worth it. To protect

his family, the injunction remains in place, but I'd bet there isn't

anyone watching now who doesn't know exactly who he is. Even so,

furious about having his identity revealed by thousands of tweeters

online, he instructed his lawyers to take another unprecedented step.

His representatives contacted Twitter's headquarters in San

Francisco requesting they release the details of approximately 75,000

users who had named him online in relation to the affair. This left

readers worried they could be facing jail. Britain's top lawyer,

the Attorney General Dominic Grieve has taken a tough line, amid claims

Twitter had made a mockery of the law. Those who take an idea that

modern methods of communication mean that they can act with

impunity may well find themselves in for a rude shock. Can it really

be the case that passing on a bit of gossip could really get you into

such serious trouble? Time to call in a lawyer. 75,000 people have

named this footballer on Twitter and there are implications now that

he's gonna try and take legal action against them all, that's

absurd isn't it? Technically if I was to forward the name to someone,

that opens me up to different claims. I could be sued for breach

of privacy, defamation. If there's an injunction in place stopping me

from revealing the name, I'm technically in breach of that

injunction. The idea that suddenly all the same laws about defamation

and so forth that apply to big time newspapers apply to individuals sat

in their bedrooms will be absolutely shocking to most people?

I think people have got to learn that Facebook, Twitter, all these

social media platforms - you should treat them in the same way as if

you're speaking in a public forum. There is no reason why you can't be

pulled up for something you've said on social media sites so you've got

to be very careful. So it hasn't happened yet but in theory you

could get banged up for tweeting. Next time you're a bit drunk and

about to press Tweet, ask yourself this - Could you handle a two year

stretch in gossip prison? What's the future Niri, gossip is like a

virus and it can't be stopped? These laws might make sense morally

or ethically but are they enforceable anymore. If you were to

ask me when all this blew up with CTB - I would say there was a great

momentum to really have a look at the law of privacy look at whether

we're balancing the right of privacy and the right of free

speech. Look at whether injunctions are right in the day and age of

social media but in the light of what's happened recently with the

phone hacking scandal. I think the whole climate has changed again -

back to where we were before all this developed which was that

people should have an area of their private lives that people shouldn't

intrude upon. The summer's scandals aren't finished yet. As the

enquiries into phone hacking continue, it's likely there'll be

more arrests, more newspapers dragged in, and more famous victims

revealed. Even footballer Ryan Giggs was hacked, though I cant

imagine he'd have any skeletons rattling round in his closet. As

for super-injunctions, there are already less celebs going for

gagging orders, after seeing how easily their secrets can be

revealed. But the boundaries of privacy have been left blurred like

How much of your life revolves around gossip? I think it does. If

you haven't got gossip, what do you talk about when you go to work

every day? If there's no gossip, there's no interest there's nothing

to talk about. Personally it wouldn't bother me because I don't

necessarily read it, but actually when you think about the

conversations that you have in your day to day life its all about

gossip. So what you're saying is maybe we make it worse by wanting

to read it? Absolutely yeah, because if we didn't buy it, they

wouldn't do it. So what have I learnt? Well, in an age of social

media, super injunctions, celebrity gossip wherever we look, we seem to

be more obsessed with the details of other peoples lives more than

ever before. And while we might not agree with the ways in which this

gossip is gathered, that doesn't stop us from devouring the stuff.

Journalists, celebrities, the public, we're all a bit

hypocritical when it comes to this. But I don't think the law needs to

be changed to stop us indulging in a bit of idle tittle tattle.

Perhaps what we all need to do, is be a bit more responsible about the

way in which we gossip - for the sake of ourselves, for others for

society, and of course for the celebrities. Let's never forget the