LITTLEJOHN

ARE you one of the handful of people who still doesn’t know the identity of the married celebrity alleged to have taken part in a threesome with another couple in a paddling pool full of olive oil? Tough. Even though his name has been published around the world, the Supreme Court yesterday upheld an injunction preventing newspapers in England and Wales from revealing any detail that could lead to him or his famous spouse being identified.

We can only refer to him as PJS — which aren’t his real initials, just in case you’re trying to work it out. Obviously, I know who it is, as does everyone else who works in what we used to call Fleet Street, in the broadcast media, showbiz and, naturally, the entire legal profession.

So do their friends, families, mistresses, their distant cousin in Toronto and the dogs in the street in downtown Detroit. Oh, and everyone in Scotland, too.

While we’re at it, plenty of people also know the identity of the famous actor who paid for sex with a prostitute; the football manager who sent explicit sex-texts to his divorced lover; and every other philandering public figure who has managed to obtain a draconian gagging order against the Press.

Five minutes on the internet and all will be revealed. If and when you do find out the true identity of PJS, you probably won’t be in the slightest bit surprised.

People who tell me they already know who it is simply shrug their shoulders and say: ‘I always thought he was a wrong ’un.’

Here’s the really preposterous aspect, the outrageous affront to justice. This latest injunction applies only in England and Wales. It has no force in Scotland, Canada or the United States, where newspapers have already printed his name. Or anywhere else in the world, come to that.

Why should the English and Welsh people be denied the right to information that is freely available not just throughout the globe, but elsewhere within the United Kingdom?

Indeed, announcing the judges’ 4- 1 decision, Lord Mance seemed to acknowledge the absurdity of their ruling. He said it could be compared to King Canute attempting to hold back the tide, but added: ‘Unlike Canute, the courts can take steps to enforce its injunction.’

HE ALSO took a swipe at the Daily Mail’s front page coverage of the case, which was headlined: ‘Why The Law Is An Ass.’ Lord Mance said: ‘If that is the price of applying the law, then it is one which must be paid.’ Actually, that’s not strictly true. The price of applying this particular interpretation of the law is the cost of a very expensive legal team. These Kryptonite-plated privacy injunctions are only available to the extremely wealthy. No wonder Desmond Browne QC, representing PJS, had earlier told the Supreme Court: ‘This case has been hailed by some as the death-knell of the privacy injunction. We hope that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.’

I bet he does. As one of Britain’s highest paid, highest profile briefs, Desmond has a barrow in the market place. He stands to make a small fortune representing rich celebs seeking to hide their indiscretions behind a veil of legally enforced anonymity.

In this case, Browne managed to persuade the court that the order should remain in force to protect PJS’s children. The judges decided that the family’s right to privacy under the Human Rights Act outweighed the right to freedom of expression.

But should misbehaving celebrities be allowed to use the Yuman Rites Act to protect their carefully cultivated public images?

If the right to family life was so important, surely PJS should have thought about his children when he was diving into a paddling pool full of olive oil for an extra-marital threesome. Why should he be allowed to get away with it, simply because he can afford the best lawyers money can buy?

You might argue, as the judges did yesterday, that what interests the public is not necessarily in the public interest. Some would say it’s none of our business what a celebrity gets up to in private — even if, in the case of PJS, he has made a career out of inviting the public to be interested in himself and his family.

That’s not the point, though. For a start, why should the law be interpreted differently in England and Wales from Scotland, which despite its own fiercely independent legal system is also subject to European human rights legisla- tion? Go figure, as our American friends say. But this ruling is consistent with a more widespread erosion of Press freedom and the public’s right to know what is being done in their name.

We are constantly being told that personal privacy is an outdated concept — and politicians are passing new laws giving the authorities ever more extensive powers to snoop on our emails, phone calls and internet activity.

Yet at the same time, what should be legitimate public knowledge is being wrapped in a cloak of secrecy by the Government and its agencies.

The majority of our laws are manufactured behind closed doors by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and rubber- stamped without democratic debate.

Often the first we know about them is when someone is dragged before the courts for breaking a law no one knew existed.

Successive governments have tried to restrict Freedom of Information requests. Ministers are always conspiring to bury embarrassing statistics, such as the true immigration figures and the huge volume of National Insurance numbers issued to migrants.

It was reported yesterday that Number 10 wanted to call in the police to investigate who leaked the letter exposing Call Me Dave’s attempts to collude with big business to campaign for a vote to remain in the EU, even before he’d begun his sham ‘reform’ negotiations.

We also learned that Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, when he was running the defence department, tried to court- martial a general who warned that spending cuts would have a deleterious effect on the capability of our Armed Forces to keep us safe.

Government at every level is in thrall to a sinister culture of coverup. Local councils take major planning decisions in closed session and spend tens of thousands on lawyers to conceal neglect and incompetence, especially when it concerns children killed while in the care of social services.

Since the poisonous Leveson Report on the Press, the police have taken a Trappist vow of silence, refusing to reveal details of crime suspects and treating all contact with journalists as a criminal offence.

But it’s what’s going on in the courts that should worry us most. It’s not just the number of cases being held in camera these days, it’s the judges’ relentless efforts to fashion laws to suit the powerful and erode centuries of freedom.

BACK when this injunction was first granted, I wrote: ‘ Privacy law doesn’t exist in America, Australia or New Zealand, whose legal systems are all based on English Common Law.

‘ It is largely an invention of Continental Europe, designed to protect corrupt and philandering politicians, and has now been foisted upon us. British judges are using infinitely flexible European human rights legislation to mould the law to suit the enemies of the public’s right to know.

‘And while we remain members of the EU, there’s nothing we can do about it, since acceptance of the human rights convention is a cast-iron condition of membership.’

As the law stands, were I to reveal the identity of PJS in this column, I would be held in contempt of court and could be sent to jail.

The real scandal isn’t just the way in which the courts protect rich celebrities who think they can behave as they like without having to face the consequences.

It’s the cynical manner in which politicians, lawyers and judges set out deliberately to obstruct the public’s right to know anything they deem inconvenient or trivial.

We’re not children and it’s time they stopped treating us all with contempt. They can’t go on playing King Canute for ever.

When you do find out the identity of those involved you won’t be at all surprised