So we can finally talk about Andrew Marr. Hooray for us. What a victory for democracy and freedom of speech that we can write without fear about someone having sex with someone else. High-fives all round.
Meanwhile, Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, has been accused of lying to parliament. It’s a story that slipped under the radar while the hyenas descended on the corpse of Andrew Marr’s superinjunction, but it happened all the same: the MP Chris Bryant used parliamentary privilege to accuse Brooks of misleading the House.
He said: “Rebekah Brooks, who on March 11 2003 said she had paid police officers for information, wrote to the select committee a couple of weeks ago to say what she really meant was that other newspapers had done so. That is a blatant lie. This House should no longer put up with being lied to.”
That is all very well for Bryant to say. But how can he expect anyone to be interested in such a story? Accusing a hugely powerful chief executive of a multimillion-pound corporation of lying to parliament is one thing; but did they lie to their spouse? If not, how can anyone even be bothered to fire up a laptop to write about it?
We’re not interested in tales of lies to parliament; we want to know about celebrities and what they do with their genitalia. If the papers simply came out with this truth and admitted it, then I don’t think there would be a problem.
“Look,” they could say. “You know and I know that we’re not really holding the rich and powerful to account. You just want to know which people are having a bit on the side with someone else. So here it is, not in any public interest, but simply to satisfy your craving for titbits about famous people’s infidelities, because it shines a little glow of prurient happiness in your otherwise worthless little lives.”
But no. We have to go through the pantomime of pretending that the reason everyone is fighting these superinjunctions is in the brave battle for truth against those naughty folk who’ve been caught with their pants down and are using their children as a human shield to protect their public profiles.
Even if that were true, that’s not why it’s happening. It’s happening because celebrity-shagging flogs papers and people like to read about it – more than they like to read about evidence given to select committees, for example.
The rich and powerful are trying to use their wealth to pay for gags, the newspapers bleat. If only we could tell you about sex in hotel rooms, they whine. If only we could reveal details about who did what with whom and when, they grumble, then we could really hold these people to account.
Meanwhile, the rich, and really powerful, like Rebekah Brooks, just carry on, without fear of scrutiny from a large section of the press.
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