The three Waterkloof schoolboys who distributed a manipulated picture of two masturbating gay men with the faces of the school?s principal and vice-principal, on Monday told the Pretoria High Court they had not meant to defame anyone.

The Waterkloof Hoerskool pupil who created the image on his computer, Hennie le Roux (18), told Pretoria High Court Judge Ben du Plessis it was "the funniest thing he had ever seen".

The three were testifying in a civil trial in which former vice-principal Dr Louis Dey is suing them for R600 000 for defaming and belittling him.

Le Roux said he had the idea for creating the image when he saw a photo of principal Dr Christo Becker on the school's website. He thought about a scene from the animated television series South Park, where a character in a wheelchair pastes the face of someone on crutches on a body builder's body.

After obtaining a photo of two naked men on a gay body builder website, he said he pasted Dey's and Becker's faces onto the bodies. He also pasted the school emblem over the men?s genitals before sending the image to a "former good friend".

At church that night, he asked the friend if he had received the photo. His friend showed the photo to him on his cellphone and sent it to another friend.

A careless mistake

"I realised it could explode and that I was going to be in trouble with this. I asked 'don?t sent it to everyone'," Le Roux testified.

He insisted he had created the photo as a joke.

He said the older children in the school had always said "Dr Dey is gay" simply because it rhymed. He never thought Dr Becker or Dr Dey were homosexual, because both had sons.

Le Roux said he had tried to apologise to Dr Becker three times, but never to Dey, because his friends had told him Dey had chased them out of his office when they tried to apologise.

Le Roux confessed after being confronted by a teacher about the picture, which was later printed out and put on the school notice board.

Two of the school?s former pupils, Christian Gildenhuys and Reinhard Janse van Rensburg, who distributed and printed the photo, testified that they had found the whole thing funny, because it was so far removed from reality. They said they had never meant to defame or belittle anyone.

Gildenhuys said he realised distributing the image had been "unthinking and impulsive". He said he never thought it would cause so much uproar or that anyone would go to the police about it.

The case continues.