THERE were no crossed lines in the High Court — just cross faces. T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom’s mobile business, suffered the wrath of the judge when it lost a case it brought against its joint-venture partner, Virgin Mobile.

In a harsh attack, Mr Justice Cooke said that the German company’s conduct was “deserving of moral condemnation” and was “in my judgment deliberate engineering” by T-Mobile “in order to secure commercial advantages”.

T-Mobile carries all voice calls for Virgin Mobile and makes a fixed monthly payment to Virgin for the custom it brings. The dispute, which T-Mobile lost, centres on a reduction in these payments.

But German being German and the judgment being in English, something got lost in the translation back at headquarters in Bonn.

In an e-mail that just happens to have fallen into my lap, staff were kept abreast of the outcome.

In the message, which was headed “How does our ‘win’ impact us?” it explained that there were two cases, one about the definition of a Virgin Mobile customer — which T-Mobile apparently won — and the other which it lost. “This is a great result for our company,” the message enthused to staff who were no doubt falling over themselves to crack open the Liebfraumilch.

It is fortunate that the author of the message, Neil Lovell, a director of T-Mobile, is not involved in the communications industry in any way.

When asked about his extraordinary interpretation of the events of last week, he said: “We’re not in denial. It’s quite normal to communicate the positives and negatives of any situation and that’s what we did.

“The media reported the negative news so we informed our staff of the positive side of things.”

That will be it then.

French choke on Putin’s hard-to-swallow tastes

IN THE WORLD of lesser mortals a glass of Cheval Blanc grand cru Saint-Emilion is the equivalent of a bucket of beluga.

But when you are a billionaire and a world leader, a drink is just a drink, just like the Aston Martin gets you from A to B and the gold bars prop open the castle doors.