Joey Barton has lost the ‘bike nonce’ libel showdown with Jeremy Vine after a judge ruled that his social media posts were indeed defamatory.

BBC Radio 2 host and notoriously annoying cyclist Jeremy Vine is suing Joey Barton after the ex-footballer called him a “bike nonce” on Twitter. Barton had shared a photo of Vine with actual nonce Rolf Harris which he captioned: “Oh Jeremy Vine. Did you, Rolf-aroo and Schofield go out on a tandem bike ride? You big bike nonce ya!”

The following day, Barton retweeted a post featuring a picture of Vine cycling which dubbed him a “bike nonce”, and added his own comment: “If you see this fella by a primary school call 999.”

Seems like typical Twitter ‘banter’, but I guess Joey Barton didn’t count on Jeremy Vine literally taking him to court over it. There were plenty more Tweets of similar nature, and unfortunately for Joey Barton, the high court has now ruled that 11 posts he made were defamatory, with Justice Steyn declaring:

“The hypothetical reader would not have gained the impression that this was meaningless abuse, in the heat of the moment. It was a statement of fact, and it was defamatory at common law.”

The judge said the juxtaposition of the words “nonce” followed by assertions that Vine is known as a “pedo” is “striking” and reinforced “the impression that the former was used in the sense of ‘paedophile’”.

Lawyers acting for Barton said the posts conveyed “no meaning” or none that was defamatory under law, and said a reader would have to be “careless” and “unsophisticated” to think Barton was alleging paedophilia. Welp, clearly the high court did not agree with that sentiment.

Joey Barton has yet to comment on the ruling, but I’m sure that can’t be too far off. Just recently he was talking about how things were going really “well” in court as he continued to collect donations from his followers:

It went well in court yesterday. William McCormick represented our position.

Basically, the judge will decide in the next few weeks if ‘Bike Nonce’ means ‘Paedophile’.

I will update when I have more news.

Thanks to all those who kindly donated to the cause. 👍…

— 👑 Joey Barton 👑 (@Joey7Barton) May 10, 2024

Massive L for Joey Barton, and for anyone who donated to the cause, which has ultimately failed. Maybe next time just call him a ‘bike w@nker’ and be done with it?

Joey Barton also has the Eni Aluko lawsuit to worry about, so maybe just keeping his gob shut in general would be a better shout at this point.