Big Brother star Danielle Lloyd, who was stripped of her Miss Great Britain title in 2006, today saw her name cleared at London’s High Court, where the pageant organisers accepted she did not cheat her way to the title.
At a brief hearing, Miss Great Britain Ltd agreed a libel settlement with Lloyd, a former girlfriend of footballer Teddy Sheringham.
Lloyd sued after the pageant organisers published a gallery of newspaper cuttings on its website, including a Mirror front page with the headline “Miss Cheat Britain! Miss GB is sacked for fibbing about fling with Judge Teddy”.
The article described how the pageant organisers had stripped her of the 2006 Miss Great Britain title on 2 November 2006, after, in an interview she gave to Eve magazine, she described how she had been given a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes as a Christmas present months earlier in 2005 by then-boyfriend Sheringham, who was a judge of the 2006 pageant.
Lloyd claimed that the publication of the newspaper front page on the Miss Great Britain website conveyed the defamatory meaning that she had ‘cheated’her way to the title.
However, at a brief hearing at London’s High Court today, her solicitor Simon Smith said: ‘The truth is that the interview given by the claimant in Eve magazine was untrue. The claimant did not in fact begin her relationship with Mr Sheringham until after she had won the Miss GB title.
‘She met him for the first time at the party on the evening of the pageant, after she had just been crowned. The Jimmy Choo shoes were in fact a personal gift from Mr Choo himself to the claimant in 2005.
‘The defendant is now satisfied that what was said in the Eve article is untrue, and that the claimant did not cheat and was not in a relationship with Mr Sheringham at the time of the 2006 pageant.
‘It was a matter of importance to the claimant that this be recognised, especially by the pageant organisers who are in the best position to know whether any cheating occurred, in light of the considerable publicity at the time, and since, which suggested the contrary.”
‘In light of that recognition, the claimant is prepared not to pursue this libel claim.”
Clarification: Press Gazette has been asked to make clear that at the High Court hearing the Statement in Open Court which was read out made no reference to the payment of damages by Miss Great Britain to Danielle Lloyd.
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