Week in headlines - a Ryan Giggs special: Naming Private Ryan, you’re not secret anymore and the Manchester United bed devil

Yeah yeah yeah, the mysterious CTB character who had previously prevented former reality star and apparent good-time gal Imogen Thomas from revealing details of her affair is of course Ryan Giggs.

This rumour spread on Twitter and the star had attempted to silence the voices of the masses, before Scotland’s bold, brave or publicity seeking Sunday Herald revealed all.

Up to this point the newspapers had stood in fear of the privacy law that Giggs had managed to hide himself behind.

The press though were like a pubescent teenager desperate to have a little choke of the chicken, but were prohibited from doing so, so they were restricted to having an occasional play until they were finally let loose, if that’s not too graphic an analogy.

This though is when the tabloid press excels, as they delight in flirting with trouble through inflammatory headings, so thank you Ryan Giggs, as this week you have created an extra special week that was in headlines.

It all started with this. Far from being the most witty or amusing of the following bunch, this paved the way for tabloid headline writers to unleash top lines that had been running through their heads since the injunction was taken out. In direct opposition to a much used law that up until now the press has been fearful of, the Sunday Herald stepped up with a barely disguised picture and a tell-all expose masquerading as an educated information piece. Only time will tell if the paper are brave trailblazers who will live to tell the tale, or merely the first the man over the top of the trenches to be shot down in a hail of bullets.

Before this the tabloids had to make to do with poking Giggs with a stick. Knowing full well who CTB was, The Sun took great pleasure in antagonising him to relieve the frustration of being unable to report the sort of juicy celebrity based scandal on which it thrives. Seemingly both parties were determined to keep the story alive. Giggs irritated the masses by allegedly trying sue the thousands of Twitter users who outed him and the tabloid press did what they do best by continually stirring the story. The Sun unsurprisingly angrily condemned the winger’s actions, but they didn’t let this get in the way of a cheeky rhyme that Tennyson would’ve been proud of.

The People also enjoyed provoking Giggs by splashing (never carefully placing) across their front page a headline that bore a remarkable resemblance to the club that the alleged star plays for. By Saturday the net was closing in on Giggs, with the nation’s and the press’ patience at having to keep a secret beginning to fray.

By Sunday his badly concealed image had been revealed, but collectively the press were still wary of printing his name or picture for fear of upsetting a man who has already spent a reported £200k on legal action. His name had become public knowledge by this point, but the law stood in the way of expressing this. Anybody who saw United relegate Blackpool on the last day of the season and wasn’t aware of who the offending naughty boy was, would have known by the opening moments of the game, as travelling fans delighted in expressing this to Giggs. As did The Sun.

Both The Independent and its condensed relation the i revelled in their new found freedom. Despite being unaccustomed to devoting their front page to something as trivial to world order as sport, the broadsheet tackled the issue with a maturity that was lacking in the tabloids coverage. They focused on the legal aspect of the injunctions’ breach and presented it all in their usual minimal style, although even they couldn’t resist a cheeky nod to the knowingness of the story amongst fans and followers of social media like Twitter. The papers cheaper and more compact cousin happily straddled the fence between tabloid and broadsheet, with a pun free broadsheet style headline, but included a simple and effective tabloid inspired double-entendre.

It wasn’t just the press who were fit to bursting point in their desire to finally clarify the nation’s suspicions that Giggs is the extra-marital offender, as Lib Dem MP John Hemming blurted out in Parliament: “With 75,000 people naming Ryan Giggs on Twitter, it’s impractical to jail them all.” By Tuesday the injunction had been broken in an unprecedented manner and the winger woke up to find his unshaven mug on the front of nearly every paper in the country. The tabloids were well prepared for such an event and devoted an unhealthy amount of the space to the fling, but it was the Daily Mirror who won the battle of the front page with a delightfully subtle headline.

Hemming’s admission in the Commons ensured the tabloid’s coverage was an odd mix of tittle-tattle, legal wrangling and football gossip. The Daily Mirror ably covered all these bases, but in a fashion that was far from assured when compared to some of their counterparts, with sports writers attempting to offer comment at the front of the paper on issues they seemingly only had a vague understanding of. However, their forte in headline writing was clear for all to see and they confidently proved the front cover was no fluke, whilst setting the tone for the pages that followed.

The Sun has never been subtle. Instead they prefer the bull-in-a-china-shop approach, as exemplified by this headline. Gotcha Giggsy.

Tags: Imogen Thomas, Manchester United, Premier League, Ryan Giggs