Ashley Cole has accepted an out of court damages settlement and received a public apology from both the News of the World and The Sun newspapers after they printed pictures and stories about a gay sex romp which readers assumed involved Cole and his friend DJ Masterstepz, Choice FM DJ Ian Thompson.

Ashley Cole always denied being involved in the alleged rendezvous with another prominent Premiership footballer and the music industry figure mentioned in the story and despite being engaged to Girls Aloud popstar Cheryl tweedy was widely believed to the player involved.

Both newspapers issued apologies to both men after they had filed claims for damages over the libel, harassment and breach of privacy caused by the story:

“We are happy to make clear that Mr Cole and Masterstepz were not involved in any such activities.

“We apologise to them for any distress caused and we will be paying them each a sum by way of damages.”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 10:20 am and is filed under Football Legal News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.