Big Brother star Lisa back in court over libel action

Jan 30 2008 by Katie Bodinger, South Wales Echo

BIG Brother contestant Lisa Jeynes will find out tomorrow if her appeal against a judge’s decision to throw out her libel action has been successful.

The former Big Brother Four contestant, 39, wants to sue over publications on the cover of Love it! magazine and in the News of the World in May 2006, arguing the words they used suggested she was a man.

Last April, her claim was dismissed, but she will find out tomorrow if that ruling has been overturned.

Speaking yesterday, Lisa, of Penarth, said: “I’m just hoping for a positive result.

“I’m a fighter and I have had a hell of a year. I’m just looking forward to getting it done and dusted.”

Lisa, once a manager at the old Wallis clothes shop on Queen Street, Cardiff, is complaining about the words: “BB’s Lisa ‘the geezer’.

“My fake boobs fell out on date with James Hewitt!”

She says the innuendo – against rumours that there was to be a transsexual contestant – was that she was really a man posing as a woman, a transgender or transsexual.

Last April, High Court judge Mr Justice Eady dismissed her claim, ruling that no reasonable reader could conclude the words complained of bore the meaning she alleged.

News Magazines Ltd and News Group Newspapers, who deny the libel allegation, argue that the words in Ms Jeynes complaint taken in their proper context could not bear her “far-fetched” meaning.

Lisa, of Teasel Avenue, was at the Court of Appeal on Monday to hear her counsel, Adrian Davies, argue that the case should be allowed to proceed.

He told the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, sitting with Lord Justice Tuckey and Lord Justice Jacob, that the effect of the judge’s ruling would be that it would be perverse of a jury to attribute to the word “geezer” its dictionary meaning.

He said it should be left to a jury to decide whether the cover line was reasonably capable of bearing the meaning alleged, and whether – in the case of the magazine – there was sufficient proximity between the cover line and text, which was not the subject of complaint, to cure the defamatory sting.

The appeal judges said they will give their ruling tomorrow morning.

katie.bodinger@mediawales.co.uk