I’m gagging – if you’ll pardon the pun – to know who they are, all these injunctionees and superinjunctionees who are apparently currently cluttering up our courts with their desire not to have their sexual indiscretions plastered across the nation’s tabloids. Aren’t you? Of course, I could Google and find out from a non-UK website within two shakes of a madam’s lash, but where’s the fun in that?

The thing is, I shouldn’t want to know who they are.

I shouldn’t be Googling to find it out. This is not, as my American friend says, my Best Self and I should ignore its siren call.

Which is why, although we seem to be expected to be up in arms about these philandering people’s ability to protect themselves from exposure, I find myself mentally defending the use of this nifty legal device.

The anti-injunction argument goes: these things are a threat to our great British tradition of freedom of speech and to the freedom of our press to expose matters of public interest. They protect the rich, famous and powerful and help them continue to live the unfettered lives of Riley we don’t enjoy.

Hmm. Yes. Well. But. My suspicion is that these highfalutin phrases like freedom of speech and freedom of the press actually translate into something baser. Something like “freedom to gossip” and “freedom to shift an extra 25,000 copies”. And the phrase “in the public interest” does not mean “a story that interests the public”. It means a story of the order that X or Y has been involved in something unquestionably criminal, like pilfering pension funds, trafficking drugs, illegally arming war-torn nations or commissioning another series of The Hunks.

"Cretins aren't spared by super injunctions"