JOEY Barton has lost part of his court showdown with Jeremy Vine after he branded the TV presenter a “bike nonce”.
BBC Radio 2 host Vine is suing ex-Man City, Newcastle and QPR midfielder Barton for libel and harassment over the slew of vile posts.
This included posts on X, formerly Twitter, where the TV presenter was accused of being a “paedo defender”.
Barton also compared Vine, 58, to “bogeymen” paedophiles Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
One of the posts featured an image of the presenter edited next to disgraced TV star Harris and referred to him as a “big bike nonce”.
Barton, 41, later retweeted a picture of Vine cycling, writing: “If you see this fella by a primary school call 999.”
Mrs Justice Steyn today found 11 of the 12 posts had a defamatory meaning.
The High Court judge was asked to rule on the “natural and ordinary” meanings of the tweets.
She said the “strong impression” from the words is that the term “nonce” was being used in its “primary meaning to allege the claimant has a sexual interest in children”.
The judge added: “While I do not consider that the hypothetical reader, who would read the post quickly and move on, would infer a causative link, ie that the claimant defends paedophiles because he shares the same propensity, the juxtaposition of the words ‘nonce’ and ‘pedo’ is striking and would reinforce the impression that the former was used in the sense of ‘paedophile’.
“The reader would have understood that the word ‘bike’ was a meaningless aspect of the accusation, serving only as an indication that this was a label attached to the claimant, who was known as a cyclist, without detracting from the operative word ‘nonce’.”
Vine’s lawyer Gervase de Wilde previously argued the posts wrongly suggest the broadcaster has a “sexual interest in children”.
But Barton, who has 2.8million Twitter followers, claimed his opinions were not defamatory and instead “vulgar abuse”.
William McCormick, representing Barton, claimed the ex-footballer was responding in a “Twitter spat” in the “same way anyone who remembers him will remember he used to tackle”.
Ex-Bristol Rovers manager Barton raised £15,959 through a GoFundMe page to support his costly legal battle with Vine.
He claims any awarded damages will be donated to the Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool.
Barton is also being sued by retired Lioness Eni Aluko after the ITV pundit and her family were targeted on social media.
