Status Anxiety: I’d rather be imprisoned for a better joke

Two weeks ago, the London Evening Standard outed me as one of four ‘celebrities’ who’d broken the super-injunction about Ryan Giggs. According to the newspaper: ‘Lawyers warned the stars could face a huge bill for damages after revealing the name of the Premier League footballer on microblogging site Twitter.’

My crime was to post the following tweet after the story broke that Giggs’s lawyers were going after the site’s American owners: ‘In other news, Ryan Giggs has decided to sue “the grapevine”. “We can’t have people gossiping over the garden fence,” said Schillings CEO.’ Rather a feeble joke and hardly worth going to jail for.

Luckily, nothing happened. The Standard’s story, which it ran on the front page, was prompted by a Commons statement from the Attorney-General the previous day. ‘Those who take an idea that modern methods of communication mean that they can act with impunity may well find themselves in for a rude shock,’ he said.