Gordon in the morning: Gordon in the courtroom

A worried Gordon brings news this morning that someone has apparently threatened to reveal secrets about Tamara Ecclestone. You know how much The Sun, and the Bizarre team in particular, hate the idea of someone's privacy being invaded.

Which reminds me: Gordon's name came up once or twice in the Leveson enquiry into the press yesterday. Unusually for Gordon, who likes a story that he can place himself in, the tale doesn't get a mention in today's column.

There's not even the chance of a mock-up image of how Gordon and Justice Leveson might look if they came together to thrash things out:

Yesterday, Chris Atkins appeared at the enquiry. He made the movie Starsuckers, which set out to prove that certain newspapers would print any old rubbish without a care for the truth of it. I know it's hard to believe Smart's name would come up in this context, but it did. From the Guardian's live blog:

One of the stories that Atkins and his collaborator Jen got into the papers was about a Girls Aloud singer.

"Sarah Harding was secretly a fan of quantum physics".

It ran as a lead story in Gordon Smart's Bizarre column in the Sun complete with a fake quote.

The Sun objects to this and have asked the Leveson inquiry to challenge it. It says it rang Sarah Harding's PR who gave them the quote.

Atkins says he finds this "a remarkable coincidence" as the Sun did not challenge this claim about the fake quote since the movies came out two years ago.

You've also got to love a response which quibbles over how made-up the quote was while not actually engaging with the wider question of how a totally bollock-stuffed story appeared in Smart's column in the first place.

Chris Atkins does point out that running rubbish doesn't actually stand in the way of being celebrated by your peers:

Gordon Smart was, after our film, voted the number one celebrity journalist of the year and second was Clemmie Moodie of the Mirror and both of them ran our stories.

There's your angle, Gordon: "Judge hears of Sun man's awards success". It's not all grim news for The Sun in the courtroom, is it?

By the way: the original of that photo is worth a look.