Pop singer Sir Elton John has failed in a bid to prevent the Daily Mail publishing an unflattering picture of him taken in public apparently revealing the extent of his baldness.
John claimed the picture was an invasion of privacy – it was taken as he walked from his car to his London home.
The photograph showed John wearing a small baseball cap which appeared to show that he is completely bald now apart from a pair of sideburns.
In recent years John has always disguised the extent to which he is follicly challenged.
In rejection an application for an injunction stopping publication in Saturday’s Daily Mail, Mr Justice Eady held that the photograph did not convey any private information.
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Mr Justice Eady likened the photo to one of Sir Elton “popping to the shops for some milk” and, with reference to the key judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, Von Hannover v. Germany, he found no evidence of harassment.
Daily Mail lawyer Liz Hartley, of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, said: “Mr Justice Eady has rightly sought to put Von Hannover in the context that the ECHR originally intended.
“Photographs of public figures and celebrities which do not disclose information of a kind which traditionally gives rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as issues of health, sexual and other intimate relationships, should not be the subject of applications which are really more to do with whether or not they like the photograph than the protection of privacy rights.”
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The photographs were published in Saturday's Daily Mail.
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