Imogen Thomas will probably be feeling much better about herself today (21 February, 2012) after Manchester United and Wales footballer Ryan Giggs finally gave up all rights to anonymity in the High Court, regarding his alleged affair with the glamour model and former Big Brother star, reports the UK's Daily Telegraph.
It was back in April 2011 when Giggs first won a 'gagging order' against Thomas, but shortly afterwards he was named in the House of Commons by MP John Hemming, who said his parliamentary privileges allowed him to do so. At the time, Hemming said, "With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it's obviously impractical to imprison them all". Last year, the Prime Minister David Cameron said privacy rulings that prevent the media from printing stories already in the public domain were "unsustainable" and "unfair", and it was certainly true that Giggs' name was being linked to the affair on social network sites while the press were banned for reporting on it. However, today in court, the counsel Hugh Tomlinson QC told Mr Justice Tugendhat, ""He has consented to the removal of the anonymity", before adding that it was a "silly and unfortunate error", to which no moral blame could be attached and that it should not result in Giggs being deprived of his right to continue to seek damages.
The football star had initially won the injunction after claiming Miss Thomas had attempted to blackmail him over their affair, but the gagging order slowly began to unravel after he accepted that was not the case. Ms Thomas said in a statement at the time, "To suddenly have to defend my character because of this legal process has been extremely upsetting and stressful.I'm just relieved that the parties and the court now accept that I'm no blackmailer. I have been vindicated and that's all I wanted".