A married Premier League footballer who had affairs with two women faces being named this weekend after failing in an extraordinary last-ditch plea to top judge Lord Woolf for his identity to remain secret.
His lawyers asked Lord Woolf, the English Lord Chief Justice, not to remove the cloak of anonymity until he had time to ask the House of Lords to consider whether confidentiality laws apply to affairs outside marriage.
But Lord Woolf ruled that the footballer had now run out of time and the story "would inevitably emerge irrespective of the order which the court has made."
Lord Woolf said: "One of the main reasons why the court was prepared to grant a stay was because the case was put forward in the Court of Appeal that it was one where the claimant was anxious to protect his wife and child from the damaging consequences of the publicity.
"But the claimant it appears has himself said something to his wife, apparently not the full story, as to what has happened."
The injunction preventing the footballer being named expires on Friday at midnight.
PA