The Second Serve // Cereal Philanderer

Late last week, the Christian Horner story took an unexpected turn when – shortly after being cleared of allegations of inappropriate conduct towards a female colleague – screengrabs of what appear to be Christian’s WhatsApp messages were dumped on an anonymous Google Drive  sent to F1 bosses and journalists.

For the most part, they’re pretty tepid – closer in tone to Michael Owen’s “Tremendous by the way” sexts than Adam Levine’s “I may need to see the booty… Fuckkkkkkkkkkkk” ones. But there’s some interesting bits and bobs squirrelled away in there that maybe warrant a bit of further discussion.

If you’ve been wondering why – after this cache of texts was made available to so many journalists – the reporting on it all has been so circumspect, it’s quite an interesting situation.

Obviously there’s always the possibility that this is a sophisticated stitch-up and the series of screengrabs has been fabricated. In that case, anyone using them to prop up their reporting risks a humiliating climb down if they’re later proved to be falsified. That’s unlikely to be most editors’ concern though.

A lot of the trepidation will be as a result of our tricksy privacy laws – because depending on who exactly leaked the messages, the risk changes. Reporting like this has to weigh up a balance between two competing legal rights: the right to privacy (Article 8) and the right to freedom of expression (Article 10).

If the aggrieved colleague turns out to be the one behind the leak, then her Article 10 right to freedom of expression could be argued to trump Christian Horner’s Article 8 one to privacy – meaning the texts could be published in the public interest.

If, however, the texts have been leaked by someone else – even if they’re acting in the colleague’s best interests – then Christian Horner’s Article 8 rights are likely to win out.

So, in the absence of any solid information as to who exactly leaked the information, editors are having to tiptoe around it.

Among all the desperate attempts to spark a bit of sexy talk with his colleague, there are a couple of decent nuggets in the sext dump. Chief among them is Christian’s apparent confession to wanking in a plane toilet.

There aren’t many people who will confess to taking out a solo membership to the Mile High Club, but if this story breaks more widely Christian should know he isn’t totally alone.

German trance legend Timo Maas is a big fan of the Mile High Shuffle and tries to get in at least one in-air wank per transatlantic flight.

Not to get all “A body language experts claims…” about this, but there was something interesting in Geri’s choice of footwear for the Supportive Wife Pap Walk she had to do out in Bahrain this weekend. She strode out in high heels.

Compare and contrast that with her fellow Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham. When Posh was having to endure the Rebecca Loos story cycle, the PR advice given to her at the time was to “wear flat shoes when out with David to give the impression of being small and vulnerable.”

Difficult though a sexting scandal can be to recover from – especially when you both live in the public eye – it’s by no means impossible. If Geri wants some guidance at this trying time, she could do worse than to take a leaf out of Tess Daly’s book.

Tess was humiliated in a similar fashion by Vernon Kay, who got caught sexting one of the Sun’s Page 3 girls. For a while, the scandal threatened to break apart their marriage, but they managed to work their way through it.

And all it took was Tess linking Vernon’s iCloud account to her own phone, so she could keep a better eye on who he was messaging.

One of the unexpected winners in the Christian Horner sexting scandal is John Harvey Kellogg: the breakfast cereal magnate.

In one string of messages, Christian appears to be trying to coax his colleague into late night sexy talk. She is clearly not in the mood however, shutting down his attempt by telling him: “I just had a bowl of cocoa pops [sic] and now ready for bed”.

There’s a common misconception that Kellogg invented corn flakes specifically to stop people from wanking. While that isn’t strictly true – he did hold staunch views on masturbation and wrote extensively about how our worst carnal urges could be curbed by eating wholesome, uninvigorating cereal.

So he’d no doubt be delighted to see that his product line is still stunting sexual activity long into the 21st century.

We can only really speculate about what is going on the Horner-Halliwell household right now, but if you want to make an educated guess as to how Geri might have reacted to being scorned, she’s very helpfully given us an insight.

It was the premise of the trailer to her never-broadcast sitcom pilot, Geri: Life Sucks – a sort of low-grade Larry David-esque effort where Geri plays a thinly-veiled fictional version of herself.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, this teaser is the only bit that survives…

[Watch it here]

Last week saw quizzes on the themes of Leap Year, Kanye Samples, Opposites and Football Chants.

This week, we have another five stacked up for you. All you have to do is listen to the ten little song fragments we’ve stitched together – then identify them. Give yourself a point for every title and every artist. You can’t trade them in for anything useful, but they’ll give you a warm, glowing feeling.

Monday’s Theme: Christian Horner

[Play it here]

Lo-fi Succession Beats To Betray Your Family To
[Play on YouTube]

What are celebs doing right this second?
[The Vole Celeb Clock]

The full AI-generated script of that disastrous Willy Wonka event
[Read it here]

Learn the alphabet with Cilla Black
[Watch on TikTok]