Joey Barton has been warned he could face a prison term if he continues to harass Jeremy Vine online, as the ex-footballer issued a High Court apology for calling the BBC presenter a “bike nonce”.
Vine, the host of shows on BBC 2 Radio and Channel Five, sued Barton over a string of posts on X, formerly Twitter, at the start of the year, which a judge ruled were defamatory.
On Friday afternoon, Barton formally withdrew all his allegations and slurs and offered an apology for the “persistent and highly damaging campaign of defamation, harassment, and misuse of private information”.
But on the morning of the court hearing, he also took to X once more to post a video of Vine in high heels, made for a segment on the footwear on his show, and the ex-footballer attached the comment: “Perfectly normal, nothing to see here” with a string of emojis including a bike, a rainbow, and five shrugs.
Barton has signed undertakings to the High Court, including one promising that he would not harass Vine in the future.
Vine says today’s post has “crossed the line”, and his barrister Gervase De Wilde suggested to the court that it was drawing an “association between Mr Vine, Mr Vine’s cycling, and Mr Vine’s sexuality in some way being abnormal”.
“It is in same territory as the harassment”, he said, pointed out Barton’s post had been liked, reposted, and replied to more than 4,000 times.
“Part of Mr Vine’s harassment claim was a claim to the effect that Mr Barton was orchestrating and encouraging replies from his followers which are hostile towards and harassing of Mr Vine.
“As he must have known, many of the replies are harassing and defamatory.”
Mr de Wilde accused Barton of “deliberately undermining and abusing the settlement process”, and urged the judge to warn him about his future behaviour.
Mrs Justice Steyn did not make a finding on today’s post, but reminded the court about Barton’s legally binding undertakings.
“Those are all serious commitments that he has given to the court”, she said. “Any breach of them is potentially punishable as a contempt of court. The potential penalty is up to two years imprisonment.”
Outside the High Court, Vine said: “Joey Barton has lost himself £450,000 with nine tweets so he needs to find himself a different hobby.”
Vine was pursued online by Barton between January 6 and 12, when he put up nine X posts to his 2.6 million followers.
The former Man City, QPR, and Newcastle midfielder repeatedly used the slur “bike nonce”, he drew links between Vine, Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, and Philip Schofield, and in one post he put a picture of Vine with the comment: “If you see this fella by a primary school call 999.”
Barton also published information about Vine’s home address, he falsely claimed Vine had advocated “forced Covid 19 vaccinations” using a misleadingly edited video, and he crowdfunded money for the subsequently legal dispute using misleading claims.
The ex-footballer’s posts were followed by an avalanche of similarly abusive messages from others, aimed at Vine and re-using the “bike nonce” label and hashtag.
Barton has already paid £110,00 in damages to Vine, he has now agreed to shoulder the broadcaster’s six figure legal costs and will also be forced to pay for his own legal fees.
In the statement in open court on Friday, Barton said of the ‘bike nonce’ slur that he “recognised that this was a very serious allegation and that it is untrue”.
“He has made clear that he does not in fact believe that the claimant has a sexual interest in children, and wishes to set the record straight, the statement read.
“The defendant also published posts during the same period in which he referred to the claimant having advocated forced vaccination during the Covid-19 pandemic, based upon a video clip of the claimant’ TV programme.
“The defendant now accepts that the claimant did not advocate this policy, and the that the video clip had been edited to give a misleading impression of what the claimant was in fact saying.
“The defendant subsequently taunted and abused the claimant for bringing a legal complaint against him. After being served with the claimant’s claim, from 15 March 2024 onwards, the defendant then published information relating to the claimaint’s home address on his X Account and, in an attempt to raise funds from the public, published a crowdfunding appeal which falsely alleged that the claimaint had published baseless and unwarranted defamatory allegations about the defendant.
“He also harassed the claimant, including by referring to him being run over on his bicycle. The defendant’s action led to the claimant to bring additional claims in defamation, harassment, and misuse of private information.
“The defendant now recognises that the allegations he made in the crowdfunding appeal were untrue, and that he further infringed the claimant’s rights by misusing his private information and harassing him, after the claimant had sought to resolve this dispute through the court.
“The defendant carried out what amounted to a persistent and highly damaging campaign of defamation, harassment, and misuse of private information against the claimant, of unprecedented scale and intensity. His publications and conduct were, with his encouragement, repeated extensively by others on social media.
“The claimant was deeply alarmed, distressed, and upset by the defendant’s conduct.”
Barton was not in court, but his legal representative said he “wishes to apoloogise for the distress his publications caused”.
She added that she does not have instructions from Barton about today’s X post, and will pass on the judge’s warning.
