Take That star Howard Donald has no right to keep his affair secret, judges rule

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Three Court of Appeal judges said that the relationship between Donald and the musician Adakini Ntuli could be made public as they overturned a previous order barring disclosure of his name.

The case came after Ms Ntuli sent a text message to the singer saying that she wanted to sell her story to "sort my life out" and end her financial suffering.

She went to the publicist Max Cliffford and began negotiations with a tabloid newspaper, but was prevented from going ahead after Donald obtained a "super-injunction" from Mr Justice Eady.

It prevented the media from disclosing even who had obtained the court order. Today, however, the "super-injunction" was lifted after the Master of the Rolls and two other senior judges ruled that Mr Justice Eady had gone too far. In the new ruling, the three judges said that while Ms Ntuli should remain barred from revealing any intimate or salacious details, the fact that they had been in a relationship could now be disclosed.

The judges said that if Donald had been allowed to remain anonymous, there was a danger that another celebrity would be wrongly suspected of conducting the affair. They suggested the fact that he had the relationship would not be damaging and concluded there was "no justification" for keeping the ban. The case follows an affair between Donald and Ms Ntuli which began in 2000. The judgment says the pair did not live together and the affair's duration and intensity were matters of dispute, but that it seemed to have ended last year.

He won the injunction in April after receiving a text message from Ms Ntuli which said: "Why shud I continue 2 suffer financially 4 the sake of loyalty when selling my story will sort my life out?" Ntuli, a musician from Manchester, describes herself as a "free-spirited Afro/Latina passionista".