PPT is what he goes by. That’s all we’re currently allowed to call a well-known man accused of using his celebrity status to prey on young women. He is anonymised while he seeks an injunction in the High Court this week against news outlets publishing stories about his alleged behaviour.

The progress of this tale is bizarre. In September, this man wrote directly to ITN and the Guardian, who had apparently spent four years and interviewed more than 100 sources in the course of their investigations, to tell them: “I understand your story is important to you but if it is published or broadcast, at the earliest opportunity I will kill myself.” This, I think, we can categorise as emotional blackmail.

Granting this injunction would set an absolutely demented precedent

Granting this injunction would set an absolutely demented precedent

He has since lawyered up. He is now seeking a lifetime ban on publication of the claims about him. Again, the pleaded cause is his risk of suicide. Not because he admits to having done what he’s accused of, but because of (unspecified) trauma. The court has been told he “does not intend to commit suicide because the allegations are true; but because of shame arising from deep-rooted childhood trauma”.

Still more oddly, the man’s lawyers are claiming that he deserves protection from exposure in the same way as the murderers of James Bulger, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables,........

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