Singer Charlotte Church is demanding libel damages of up to £100,000 from The People over a story claiming she drunkenly proposed to her boyfriend while singing karaoke in a Cardiff pub.
Church claims the story headlined ‘Marryoke – Charlotte proposes after pub karaoke session’was untrue and defamatory.
The November 6 story claimed she had made a spectacle of herself as she proposed to her boyfriend while singing karaoke in the Robin Hood pub in Cardiff, she says in a High Court writ.
Church claims she was in fact not even at the pub that night, but was instead with her boyfriend Jonathan Powell giving a live concert at the Acapella Studio in Pentrych.
Church alleges that she suffered substantial damage to her reputation, as well as considerable hurt, distress and embarrassment.
The People failed to take proper steps to check the allegations, and if it had done so it would have discovered they were completely untrue, according to the writ.
Church also claims the paper invented quotes attributed to her, Powell and an unidentified friend who said she had to help Church into a taxi.
The story was accompanied by a photo of Church that had been taken four years earlier, she alleges.
Church argues that despite a complaint from her solicitors the paper failed to provide a full and proper explanation as to how the story came to be published.
The day before she gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry the paper published a brief apology despite her requests that an apology should only be published in an agreed form.
Church is now seeking damages and an injunction banning repetition of the allegations made against her.
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