publish and be slammed

The rich and famous are employing expensive new muscle to protect them: strong-arm lawyers who take no prisoners

By Stephen Robinson

It might come as a shock to fans of Jonathan Ross that once the studio lights are dimmed, one of the BBC’s highest-paid performers is an extremely sensitive and private person. Three years ago, Mr Ross’s solicitors wrote to Fleet Street editors, passing on their client’s dismay at having been snapped by photographers while playing tennis with David Baddiel at a private members’ club. The legal letters said that publication of these pictures would constitute a breach of Mr Ross’s “right of privacy” under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Why should Ross find such an “invasion of privacy” offensive? Certainly the chat-show host, who recently asked David Cameron if he had ever masturbated about Margaret Thatcher, failed to see the funny side. Ross’s legal threats are deadly serious, if sometimes inadvertently hilarious, particularly in light of his recent violation of Andrew Sachs’s home and family life. The man who left messages on Sachs’s answering machine taunting the actor about how Russell Brand had “f***ed” his granddaughter — and thought it hugely entertaining to broadcast the fact on radio — zealously protects his own zone of privacy. He seems to think that when it comes to offensive and invasive public behaviour, there’s one rule for him and another for his targets. Luckily, he has his sympathisers: a growing A-list of celebrities, and an army of aggressive lawyers they will employ to ensure we only read what they approve.
David Walliams and Matt Lucas, the scabrous satirists who test the limits of taste with sketches about geriatric sexual fantasies, projectile vomiting, incontinence, disability, and stereotypical portrayals of pansy homosexuals, also turn out to be surprisingly thin-skinned. They exploit the traditional licence in this country that allows comedians to mock almost anyone in the name of entertainment, but then resort to threats under Britain’s historically draconian law of libel to defend themselves against similar parody.

Five months ago, Fleet Street editors were warned of the risks of repeating the completely untrue allegation that Little Britain USA had been branded by the West Hollywood Gay and Lesbian Alliance as the “most politically incorrect, offensive and obnoxious material seen” in America. One might expect Walliams and Lucas to rejoice at the charge and use it in their publicity. The complaint gained added piquancy when it turned out that the WHGLA did not exist, but the letter still raised the question: what is the point of Little Britain if it doesn’t cause offence?

The legal warnings cited above have one thing in common: they were all generated by Keith Schilling’s London offices. Every year, dozens and dozens of such legal letters are sent out from Schillings — policing newspapers, magazines, TV, radio stations and websites — and by a handful of other firms that have cornered the market in celebrity “reputation management” on behalf of actors, pop singers and people simply famous for being famous. He acts for such household names as Nicole Kidman, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Naomi Campbell, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Cameron Diaz, Lance Armstrong, JK Rowling and others. Some of the warnings make perfectly valid demands for the correction of an inaccuracy, or to prevent a client being harassed by photographers. Others can appear simply bizarre, especially when the lawyers resort to language that suggests they spend too much of their day reading the tabloids. For instance, it is disappointing to learn that Teri Hatcher, the siren star of Desperate Housewives, is a single mother who lives an off-screen life of blameless rectitude. The Daily Sport ludicrously and unbelievably alleged that “she engages in sex romps on a regular basis with a series of men in a VW van parked outside her LA home for this purpose”. Schillings immediately complained about this, but also sent out a letter to other newspapers pointing out that this was categorically untrue.

The striking aspect of this letter about an obviously implausible story, headlined “Teri’s Passion Wagon”, is that the communication from Schillings marked “Urgent. For Immediate Release” probably did more to fascinate Fleet Street than dampen down interest in their client. Given the nature of the Daily Sport, it is unlikely that anyone in the mainstream media even saw the story until Schillings alerted them. So why should lawyers flag up obviously defamatory stories about their clients by demanding that they are not repeated. The answer to this question points to the symbiotic relationship between celebrities, their lawyers and the celebrities’ PR firms. These well-remunerated figures are engaged in what is increasingly a relatively new, booming industry that might be termed “reputation management” with legal dimensions.

Until recently, Britain did not have a privacy law, but over the last 5 to 10 years it has been acquiring one incrementally — not so much from Westminster, but from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and from a small number of High Court judges trying to implement the Human Rights Act of 1998. This incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into our own statute book, and it has proved a godsend to celebrity lawyers — or, more accurately, lawyers who do work for celebrities. The air had been going out of the libel balloon for several years since the law was changed to reduce the capricious level of damages set by juries.