Terry's 'private and family life' breached

England captain John Terry can be named as the married footballer who had an affair with his former Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge's girlfriend.

The father-of-two had won a gagging order stopping the public learning about his affair with French model Vanessa Perroncel.

The so-called "super-injunction" was granted by a High Court judge under human rights laws.

Terry, 29, had successfully claimed that exposing his reported infidelity with Perroncel, who is the mother of Bridge's three-year-old son, would be a breach of his right to a "private and family life".

So draconian was Mr Justice Tugendhat's order that even its existence was supposed to be a secret. But the injunction ran out at 2pm this afternoon.

The affair is thought to have started after Bridge, 29, transfered from Chelsea to Manchester City in January 2009. Perroncel, 28, remained at the family home in Surrey, while he moved to Cheshire.

But the couple separated last month.

Terry and his wife Toni are the parents of three-year-old twins. The couple married at Blenheim Palace in June 2007 before enjoying a two-week honeymoon on Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich's luxury yacht in the Mediterranean.

Terry has been no stranger to controversy in the past. He was arrested following a fracas at a nightclub in 2003. He was later cleared of four charges, including affray and wounding with intent.

He and Chelsea team-mates were also accused of drunkenly mocking American tourists after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

Terry has spoken of how his parents worked hard to help him on the road to success, saying when he became England captain: "I definitely see my success as a chance to repay my family."

However, his father was recently caught supplying cocaine in a bar. Ted Terry was secretly filmed arranging to pass on the class A drug to an undercover reporter.

And Terry's mother Sue was cautioned for shoplifting last year alongside his mother-in-law Sue Poole after being caught with £800 of clothes and groceries from Tesco and Marks & Spencer.

This latest example of media censorship provoked fresh controversy yesterday.

A sweeping privacy law - now regularly used by sports stars to shield their lifestyles from scrutiny - has been put in place by judges without the endorsement of Parliament.

Last month, a married Premier League manager succeeded in keeping his identity out of the papers despite being spotted visiting a brothel.

By contrast, no privacy law binds the US media and Tiger Woods has lost several highly-paid deals since his serial infidelities were publicised.

Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, said: "We are in a position where the very rich can stop any publicity they don't like while in many cases they are perfectly happy to milk publicity when it's positive and benefits them."

Mr Davies, a member of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, which is shortly to publish a report on privacy law, added: "The whole situation with injunctions has gone way too far.

"A free Press should be the cornerstone of a free country and a free society and I am disturbed that injunctions are being granted willy-nilly to the wealthy and powerful."

The enforced silence over the footballer is doubly controversial because of the use of a "super-injunction" which forbids publication of anything about it.

Such powers were brought in to defend the public interest - such as protecting the operations of criminal justice agencies in pursuing criminals.

Last autumn, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge gave as an example of the proper use of a super-injunction the case of the investigation of a fraud ring.

It was essential to keep an asset-freezing order against one member secret from the rest so that they did not dispose of their assets or flee.

Privacy law has largely been created by a single judge, Mr Justice Eady, who has taken charge of a number of key cases.

Last year he declared that Formula One chief Max Mosley had been deprived of his privacy when the News of the World claimed he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy with prostitutes.

The judge said that despite the fact that the participants wore uniforms, spoke German and used suggestive props, it was not a Nazi orgy, and so publishing the story was not in the public interest.

Parliament has never passed a law on privacy.

However, judges have built one on the back of Labour's 1998 Human Rights Act, which made the European Convention on Human Rights part of British law.

Judges have made privacy rulings based on article 8 of the charter, which guarantees "respect for private and family life".

They have given this precedence over article ten, which guarantees freedom of expression and "freedom to receive and impart information". - Daily Mail