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May 1, 2003updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Sport gives Ms Dynamite page-one apology

By Press Gazette

The Daily Sport is to publish a front-page apology to pop star Ms Dynamite next week after printing a picture of her head on the body of a topless model.

Her solicitor Jonathan Coed of the Simkins Partnership said: “This is precisely what she is against.” She will also get costs and a donation to Breakthrough, the cancer charity.

Coed acted for former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell when she obtained a whole front-page apology and damages from the Daily Star over a story wrongly naming a man accompanying her as her new lover. He said the Sport quite often stuck the head of a celebrity on top of a nude model to try to sell newspapers.

“And then if you look really, really hard, you will find tiny writing somewhere saying ‘Fake Pictures Outrage’ or something like that,” he explained. “This is what they did to Ms Dynamite on 28 February.”

Sport editor-in-chief Tony Livesey maintained the pop star had a sense of humour failure. “Celebrities too numerous to mention have said how much fun it is when we print these pictures and they all say things like ‘we wish we had had bigger boobs’,” he said.

He played down the apology. “We are not talking Elton John and rent boys; we’re talking a filler,” he said. “We didn’t put the head on the body – we just got the photo off the internet. Cheapskates as we are, we chose the option of settling by just printing a little apology on page one rather than chasing it all through the courts.

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“They want it on page one because their view is that the story itself was on page one and casual punters who saw the paper and didn’t buy it might have thought she was topless inside.

“I haven’t, Piers Morgan-style, had to lie on my back and be rogered by several lawyers in striped shirts. It’s just a compromise. I haven’t nailed anyone to the cross here.”

By Jean Morgan

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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