Threesome tittle and threesome tattle…

I've been shortlisted for the UK Blog Awards 2016 Final.

I took part in a threesome once. It was when the cat jumped on the bed at a certain moment. Other than that, my knowledge of tripartite hanky-panky is limited.

You may or may not be aware that a married celebrity has been doing his best to stop our newspapers publishing details of his involvement in a three-way sexual encounter. You may or may not care. You may also think that who was doing what and to whom is of little consequence.

Yesterday the supreme court reserved its decision on whether or not to lift a temporary privacy injunction that prevents identification of the celebrity, known in court as PJS. The Sun on Sunday took the matter to appeal, while the Daily Mail has been fuming under its duvet for days now.

Let us for an unlikely moment feel sorry for the Sun and the Mail and the others. How can it make sense to ban newspapers from reporting something which is apparently known around the world thanks to the internet? I guess it doesn’t, although I did a furtive Google and returned none the wiser. Then the answer popped up on Facebook.

Oh, I see. Well here are a few observations. The highest court in the land is having to waste time and money presiding over an unseemly squabble between a celebrity and a tabloid newspaper. Doesn’t the supreme court have anything more supreme to occupy its time?

Freedom of the press is an important right, but some national newspapers only remember that when the salacious stuff sloshes into view. Any number of companies and individuals could be getting away with all sorts of disreputable behaviour – but these papers only talk freedom when sex and celebrity cuddle up together.

Unless, of course, that ‘celebrity’ happens to be John Whittingdale. When it was discovered that the culture minister had had a relationship with a sex worker who worked as a dominatrix, the newspapers were remarkably laissez faire (“Scandal? I see no scandal…” said various editors). Whether or not their lack of interest in reporting that story was connected to Mr Whittingdale’s role in curbing the poor behaviour of newspapers – while also conveniently bashing the BBC – remains open to debate.

Incidentally, Mr Whittingdale is reported to have dropped his girlfriend once he discovered she was a sex worker. Here are two further observations: one, that was rather ungallant of him; two, is it fair to wonder if plenty of MPs in his party would have been thrilled to discover a dominatrix on the side for free?

There is another irony here. The newspapers, in particular the Sun on Sunday, keep going to court to argue that they should be able to publish this celebrity’s name – and yet the longer such a right is denied, the greater the titillation, and the ‘better’ the story.

Without the names, this tale has kept on running. And in the end you can’t help thinking that in a world full of serious news, in a world shot through with sorrowful holes, this celebrity story really is a supreme irrelevancy, isn’t it?

 

 

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