Celebrity threesome is a slippery matter

A BANK holiday teaser. If I say to you now, do not, under any circumstances, think about a paddling pool filled with olive oil, what is the first thing you think about? asks Suzanne Harrington

Exactly. Oily ripples slapping gently off plastic sides. This is because our imaginations cannot differentiate between ‘a paddling pool filled with olive oil’ and ‘don’t think about a paddling pool filled with olive oil’.

It’s right there in the front of your mind’s eye, as vivid and present as if it were physically in the room. Like the elephant, but round and plastic and full of a moderately expensive condiment.

Unfortunately, nobody alerted UK threesome celebrity injunction instigators PJS and YMA about this innate human inability to not think about something after you have been instructed not to think about it.

Even if you have disengaged from the constant effluvia of celebrity micro-doings (a new boyfriend! a new tattoo! a sportswear range! more naked selfies!), even if your interest-o-meter is set firmly at zero when it comes to the Instagrammed lives of strangers, you will automatically prick up your ears when someone begins screaming “Don’t look! Nothing to see here! Move along!”

Although easily mistaken for nightwear, PJS is, as you will already know because you have been told not to know, the legal code name for a world famous member of the entertainment industry. His partner is code named YMA. They are married, but PJS is alleged to have had all kinds of fun involving two other people (imaginatively coded AB and CD), and — allegedly — paddling pools full of olive oil.

And why not? Been together ages, bit bored, but don’t want to break up? Get in the pool! Devoted to each other and the family, but want a bit of consensual variety? Crack open the oil! Slide right in! Thrash about like great big oily……

OK, let’s stop there. And that was their great mistake. Trying to make it stop there. Obviously if you are a world famous entertainer and you like paddling pools, you may get found out, no matter how much you pay for discretion. There’s always someone who thinks it’s a good idea to phone the tabloids (unless the tabloids have saved them the trouble and just hacked straight in). But what PJS did was to try and slap a ban on it being reported.

A super injunction, still upheld in the UK and Wales. Currently in the UK’s Supreme Court.

Which makes people who may usually have the same amount of interest in who is doing who in the world of celebrity make-believe as they have interest in the history of paper clips suddenly sit up and take notice. WHO are we not allowed to hear about? Doing WHAT? With WHOM? Google searches rocketed. Not because we give a hoot about the private lives of other consenting adults, but because we were told not to think about it.

What a massive, hilarious, ridiculous own goal. And the punch line? You can’t silence the internet. Duh.