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Behind me is the Carpenters Arms, the notorious London pub once owned by the Kray twins.

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Now, of course, it's a regular London pub in trendy Shoreditch - there's a ukulele shop opposite it -

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but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the people in there.

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You see, I could say that the people in there were drunk.

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I could say that, but I'm not going to,

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because under English libel law, that could get me sued.

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See, English libel law has three tests for whether something is libellous:

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First, is it published, and yes, this is on YouTube, it's published.

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Secondly, is it defamatory? Could it impugn someone's character?

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And yes, saying they're drunk could do that.

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And thirdly, is it false?

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Except that's not strictly the test, because the burden of proof, if you are sued for libel,

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is on you, the defendant.

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I would have to prove that the people in there, whoever they were, were actually drunk,

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and without a police record, or without a breathalyser test,

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or footage of them downing an entire bottle of vodka, I can't actually prove that.

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I can say that they are 'happy' or perhaps 'merry' or 'in a pub' and that's fine, that's all true,

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but I can't necessarily prove that they are actually drunk.

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Now for that, the British press has a wonderful euphemism for many years: 'tired and emotional,'

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coined after a politician called George Brown

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gave that as a statement in 1967 for the reason he was behaving erratically.

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'Tired and emotional' got picked up by Private Eye, the famous satirical magazine,

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and it entered British parlance, and now,

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well a lot of folks know that 'tired and emotional' means 'drunk'

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which means that nowadays, journalists in training

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are taught not to describe someone

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as 'tired and emotional', that just using that phrase itself

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might be libellous, because everyone knows that it means 'drunk.'

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British libel law is terrifying if you're a journalist,

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which is something you might not have known.

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