CONTEMPT is much like what it sounds. Used ordinarily, this word refers to scorn. Used in a legal sense, it is enough to make editors rush for the deodorant.

A newspaper is in contempt of court if it causes "substantial risk of serious prejudice" to the course of justice. In plainer words, a newspaper is not allowed to publish any story that could affect the outcome of a trial by putting words or thoughts into the minds of jurors.

All of which has been in the news this week, following the sensational collapse of the trial involving two Leeds United players. Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate will now face a retrial over an alleged attack on Asian student Sarfraz Najeib.

And the editor surely breaking out in a sweat this week is Colin Myler of the Sunday Mirror who, in theory at least, could be jailed if found guilty of contempt.

The Sunday Mirror's decision to publish a particular story before the trial had ended appears to have been astonishingly dumb, unless there is an explanation we don't know about.

The contentious interview, which was there for Sunday Mirror readers to read at leisure just last weekend, can no longer be discussed in print for legal reasons (and what a lot of those there are wrapped round this court case). But as we do now know the judge, Mr Justice Poole, halted the trial saying that the Sunday Mirror article had created such a serious risk of prejudice that it was impossible to proceed.

Now I don't know much about the way judges' minds work, but I think it's fair to guess that a judge will be more highly tuned to the letter of the law than to the alphabet of common sense.

Such a particular way of thinking may explain a decision to end a court case which had cost an estimated £8 million - and that's not to mention police costs calculated at £2 million, the defence solicitors' tab of £1 million and £500,000 to fund the Crown Prosecution Service.

All the work, money and heartache invested in the seven weeks of this trial was cast aside. And don't forget the endless hand-wringing and jumper-beating of Leeds fans (believe me on this point, I sit opposite one).

Now with the case on the cusp of finishing, wouldn't it have been more sensible of Mr Justice Poole to draw the jury's attention to the offending article, remind them of their requirement not to be influenced by what they might have read, and then left them to get on with it? The jury had been exposed to hours of long and careful legal argument and would surely have been able to come to a decision based on what they had heard - rather than on one newspaper story.

This is not to dismiss the importance of contempt, or to claim that news-papers should be able to carry on as they like without fear of the law. But it is to say that the judge might have been at fault too, at least in the realms of common sense.

Mr Justice Poole could also have sent the jurors off to a secure hotel, having ensured that they read no newspapers or watched no television until they had come to their decision.

But he didn't, so now we will have to go through all this again for the re-trial in October - a prospect some of us may greet with the other sort of contempt.

I DON'T really hold with the fake sheikh methods the News Of The World used to trap the Countess of Wessex into saying all sorts of stupid and objectionable things. But it's hard to feel much sympathy for a woman who takes a preposterous invented title that makes her sound like a character in a Thomas Hardy novel.

Why didn't she just call herself Sophie of the D'Urbervilles and have done with it?

And by the way, she should have kept well away from the madding crowd - especially that reporter with a towel wrapped round his head.