TV shows turn into dumb charades

London: One of the objections to the privacy injunctions that have become the season's fashionable accessory for dozens of men in sport, entertainment and business is that a device designed to buy silence results, in a leaky digital age, in huge numbers of people who know but can't say.

This dynamic is particularly apparent on TV and radio programmes, where all those involved in discussions of injunctions could name the Mr Xs but aren't allowed to. And, although BBC lawyers muted the sound and slapped a black rectangle over the mouth of Louise Bagshawe MP when she hinted at the name of one court-protected footballer on last week's Have I Got News For You? (BBC1), those in the studio audience who didn't already know now do and will spread the name virally.

The result is that news and comedy shows are now being watched by two audiences: the bewildered and the knowing, with the second group also enjoying the spectacle of contributors trying to refer to the unmentionable in code. Recently those in the know will have noted the curious reluctance of The Andrew Marr Show to engage with a privacy debate that was exercising so much of the media. The show Give Us a Clue was discontinued long ago, but its spirit continues through a rich man's legal toy that has turned large parts of TV into a game of charades.

— Guardian News and Media Ltd