Stringent privacy laws could
spell disaster for the world's
celebrity orientated press. But
does the failure of Sebastian Coe's
bid to gag two Sunday papers
mean it's open season for spurned
lovers of the rich and famous?

Sebastian Coe’s legal bid to keep his private life out of the papers failed late last month, quelling fears that privacy laws are becoming a threat to the free press.

Lord Coe, a former athlete and MP for the Falmouth and Camborne area – bloc’s own stamping ground – wanted to prevent the Sunday Mirror and Mail on Sunday from publishing an interview with his former lover Vanessa Lander.

The case went to court on May 29, but Lord Coe was refused an injunction. Summing up, Mr Justice Fulford said, “I don’t find that this was a situation in which he could expect his privacy to be protected.”

The ruling took into account that it was Lander who took the story to the press, making any move to block it a curb to her freedom of speech.

The case drew inevitable comparisons Naomi Campbell’s recent suit against the Daily Mirror: in that instance, the House of Lords ruled that the newspaper was in the wrong for publishing details of her drug addiction treatment.

It was feared then that the decision would lead to a general strengthening of privacy laws, making life increasingly difficult for the tabloid press.

But although the Campbell case leaves some areas of public figures’ lives sacrosanct, it now seems – unfortunately for Premiership footballers – that kiss-and-tell stories will continue to be a lynchpin of tabloid journalism.