TIMES SQUARE: You might have seen the story in the papers the other day about the woman - beg pardon, "spurned mistress" who won the right to publicise the story of her relationship with her wealthy ex-lover, writes Brendan Glacken.
Normally, it seems to be almost obligatory that mistresses publicise their story when the affair ends - at any rate when, as in this case, the woman is an actress and the man happens to be a millionaire with, we are told, "a string of mistresses around the world". In normal circumstances, it would seem entirely unfair that readers should be denied the juicy details of such a set-up: man cannot live on a diet of politics, sports and shares alone, and newspapers thoughtfully provide more amusing diversions whenever they can.
However, this story has a history. Some time ago, Ms Glory Anne Cliberry (48) brought a legal action claiming a share in the London flat where Mr Ivan Allan had installed her. She claimed he had grown weary of her and had lined up another lady to take her place. Ms Cliberry failed in her court case but then used court documents to tell her side of the story to the Daily Mail.
Mr Allan then secured a gagging order against Ms Cliberry. She appealed in the High Court and got a ruling that not all matters heard in a family case were confidential. The Court of Appeal backed this view last Wednesday and rejected Mr Allan's appeal.
The outcome has already been welcomed in respectable circles as a "ground-breaking" judgment that signals an end to the "culture of secrecy" that surrounds the family courts. Ms Cliberry has been hailed (by her solicitor) as a champion of press freedom whose "appreciation of freedom of speech and basic human rights led her to waive her anonymity". You would imagine from some of the media coverage that a great liberal advance has been made, that some fuddy-duddy legal ruling had finally been wiped from the books.
In fact, there is no "culture of secrecy" surrounding British (or Irish) family courts (whenever you hear the phrase "culture of", start running), just a very sensible legal arrangement protecting, in particular, the rights and privacy of children - an arrangement that may very well now come under pressure.
In reality, the upshot is that we can now look forward to a detailed and no-holds-barred account by Ms Clibbery of her lengthy affair with Mr Allen. That is the extent of the liberal advance made, the blow struck for press freedom.
If and when Ms Cliberry's full story does appear in print, it is likely to be a tale of rather touching naïvety (over 15 years) on her part. When she went to the Daily Mail, the headline read: "I thought it was love but I was no more than a sexual servant." It seems Ms Clibbery was shocked at the sworn statement by Mr Allen in which he bluntly stated: "As unfeeling as it sounds, I paid her to be at my disposal, in particular for sexual activity. It was not correct that I have ever loved her. She knows this."
As for her reasons for going to the Daily Mail in the first place, Ms Cliberry said she wanted to alert other mistresses to the fact that there was no legal concept of common law marriage and that mistresses did not have the same family law rights as married women. Well! One can imagine the consternation right across England as shocked mistresses, some of them possibly of 15 years' standing, educated women of the world, discovered that they did not have the same family law rights as married women. Possibly, some of these unfortunate ladies even thought they had even more rights than the legal spouses? That they were entitled to the marital home as well as the free flat? One's heart goes out to them in their blameless innocence.
Mr Justice Munby, of the Appeal Court, suggested that in going to the Daily Mail, Ms Cliberry reacted "as a woman scorned". And Lord Justice Thorpe said that although the judges had no knowledge as to her motives, it would not be unreasonable to infer that among them was "a desire for revenge, or a desire to recoup costs" from the first hearing which she lost (Ms Clibbery won two thirds of her costs in the Appeal Court, leaving Mr Allan with a bill of about half a million pounds).
Such hurtful remarks are surely unworthy of these esteemed men of the law, but one has to remember that is what they are - men.