Soccer star 'has no privacy right'

A millionaire Premiership soccer star was told today why his affairs with two women, including a lapdancer, should be made public.

In a landmark judgment, Britain's most senior judge told the footballer he was a role model, and so the freedom of the press outweighed his right to privacy. The player, who is married, has three weeks to persuade the House of Lords to agree to hear his appeal or his name will be published.

The footballer was ordered to pay 60 per cent of the legal costs, an estimated £200,000.

Outside court Neil Wallis, editor of the Sunday People which wanted to publish the original allegations, said the outcome was a "historic victory" and important for all branches of the media, not just the tabloid press.

Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, in his Appeal Court judgment, said there was a public interest in the off-the-field misbehaviour of highly-paid football stars: "Footballers are role models for young people and undesirable behaviour on their part can set an unfortunate example.

"The fact is that someone holding his position was inevitably a figure in whom a section of the public and the media would be interested."

The footballer went to court in April last year to prevent the Sunday People identifying him in allegations by the lapdancer and a nursery teacher that they had affairs with him.

The affair with a lapdancer was said to have lasted more than a year and that with the nursery nurse, several months. He is said to have promised he would leave his wife.

The footballer's lawyers succeeded in getting a High Court judge to stop publication of his name, and those of the two women involved. Mr Justice Jacks ruled he was entitled to privacy under the Human Rights Act. But today Lord Woolf, sitting with Lord Justices Laws and Dyson, said that ruling contained "significant flaws", and overturned the injunction pending the possible appeal to the Law Lords.

In his ruling, Lord Woolf said public figures, although entitled to a private life, must expect close scrutiny by the media, and "the higher the profile the more likely that will be the position". The judge said sexual relations inside marriage deserve confidentiality but it would be "objectionable" to apply the same criteria to extramarital sex.

In the footballer's case the two women had "their own right of freedom of expression", and it should not be assumed it was in his wife's best interests to be kept in the dark about his affairs.

In this context "to grant an injunction would be an unjust interference with the freedom of the press", said the judge.

Mr Wallis said of the decision: "It goes to a fundamental importance that if it is of interest to the public, you can pretty much take a view that it is of public interest. It sends a very clear message to the judges of this country.

"The public interest is not something to be judged by judges, broadsheet newspapers or the chattering classes. It is what ordinary people want. If you are famous, rich and a celebrity you have de facto made yourself available for investigation by the media.

"If you seek publicity and sell yourself to the glossy magazines you are putting your life into the public domain and, like virginity, you cannot claim it back again."

This is London sport