Real reason Jeremy Clarkson injunction lifted after gagging order

Detailed summary

Speaking in 2012, Hall said she was “terrified” by the injunction, telling MPs and peers at Parliament's Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions that she never intended to…

Jeremy Clarkson once made the decision to voluntarily lift an injunction that forbade his first wife from discussing their private life in the press. The Clarkson’s Farm star, now 66, took out the injunction in 2010 to prevent the media from reporting a claim from his ex-wife Alexandra Hall that they had an affair after he married his second wife, Frances Cain. But by 2011, Jeremy decided to lift the gagging order himself, telling the Daily Mail “injunctions don’t work”.

It had been put in place to ban the media from reporting “sexual or other intimate acts or dealings” between Clarkson and Hall, along with details about his “private thoughts and feelings, his health and other financial affairs”.

He said at the time: “You take out an injunction against somebody or some organisation and immediately news of that injunction and the people involved and the story behind the injunction is in a legal-free world on Twitter and the internet. It's pointless."

He explained: “You used to be able to take out an injunction and then just sit on it. But as a result of a recent court case you are now ultimately forced by the courts to go to trial – which is unbelievably expensive.”

Clarkson said at the time Hall was free to tell her story, adding that “people can either believe it or not, it's up to them".

Speaking in 2012, Hall said she was “terrified” by the injunction, telling MPs and peers at Parliament's Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions that she never intended to spread “salacious” details, and instead wanted to write “a sort of witty self-help book”.

She said: “There wasn't anything detrimental that could hurt his career. In fact it was going to be quite nice and favourable. He didn't want any acknowledgement that he had an ex-wife, I don't think.

"I think he was worried about his relationship with his current wife, knowing that I still had an association with him that he wasn't being completely honest about."

Hall added: “The fact that we had a relationship from the age of…

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