The Paedophile Of [XXXXX] – Is it Legal?

PICTURE THE SCENE, I’m out about our local village with SusiQ doing the usual weekend stuff and not paying attention to anyone in particular when I start to hear the rythm of an accoustic guitar up ahead on the street. As we get closer I can see a busker, doing his thing. So far, so normal right?

Wrong.

This is a sleepy village and early on a Saturday morning is not really the busiest time of the weekend, so buskers and entertainers don’t usually setup until midday or beyond, but today was different. As we got closer we heard the chorus of this buskers very individual song and looked at each other thinking ‘that couldn’t be what I just heard could it?‘.

As we got right up to him we got the full effect. Here was a middle aged man, a bit shoddy around the edges, standing there in the April morning sunshine in a pair of jeans and a tee shirt singing a tune of his own creation entitled “The Paeodophile of Address Removed“.

Honsetly. He was actually singing out a full address in the chorus; and I really don’t need to reprint that address here and have a libel case on my hands, so for the sake of holding back the legion of legal beagles I’m sticking with address removed for now, but all you need to know is that it’s a local address here in Dublin.

I did say sleepy little village didn’t I?

Once we got over the initial shock we could see he was putting his all into this; and the expressions on other bystanders around us seemed to confirm that we were all thinking the same thing – who exactly lives at address removed?

Which brings me to the next question in my head at the time… is this legal? Where does freedom of speech end and libel begin? The whole area of libel and slander is a minefield from what I can see, but I’ve yet to come across a story or case where someone wrote a song which was considered to be either libel or slander. It’s pretty extreme. Actually – it’s pretty insane… but is it legal?

Oh – and if you’re wondering what the hell gun weilding bride has to do with this; well in fact it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. I just came across the photo this morning on a hunt through google’s online images and loved it so much I had to stick it in somewhere.