Behind me is the Carpenters Arms, the notorious London pub once owned by the Kray twins.
Now, of course, it's a regular London pub in trendy Shoreditch - there's a ukulele shop opposite it -
but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the people in there.
You see, I could say that the people in there were drunk.
I could say that, but I'm not going to,
because under English libel law, that could get me sued.
See, English libel law has three tests for whether something is libellous:
First, is it published, and yes, this is on YouTube, it's published.
Secondly, is it defamatory? Could it impugn someone's character?
And yes, saying they're drunk could do that.
And thirdly, is it false?
Except that's not strictly the test, because the burden of proof, if you are sued for libel,
is on you, the defendant.
I would have to prove that the people in there, whoever they were, were actually drunk,
and without a police record, or without a breathalyser test,
or footage of them downing an entire bottle of vodka, I can't actually prove that.
I can say that they are 'happy' or perhaps 'merry' or 'in a pub' and that's fine, that's all true,
but I can't necessarily prove that they are actually drunk.
Now for that, the British press has a wonderful euphemism for many years: 'tired and emotional,'
coined after a politician called George Brown
gave that as a statement in 1967 for the reason he was behaving erratically.
'Tired and emotional' got picked up by Private Eye, the famous satirical magazine,
and it entered British parlance, and now,
well a lot of folks know that 'tired and emotional' means 'drunk'
which means that nowadays, journalists in training
are taught not to describe someone
as 'tired and emotional', that just using that phrase itself
might be libellous, because everyone knows that it means 'drunk.'
British libel law is terrifying if you're a journalist,
which is something you might not have known.
[Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]