How to raise a celebrity child.

CHILDREN cannot be protected from everything. They will eat dirt, experiment with electricity, learn to swear and smoke and have their hearts broken.

The best any sane parent can do is teach them not to do any of those things too often, and keep their fingers crossed. Some parents take the opposite view and try to keep their children from everything that might harm them, trying to kill each germ, prevent every fall. It's understandable but not very clever; it merely delays children learning how to deal with the problems life will always hurl their way.

So I can understand the reaction of Hugh Grant to protect his new baby daughter from the attentions which his fame and wealth were always going to bring. The child's mother Tinglan Hong - presumably with Grant's money and support - has sought and won an injunction banning photographers coming within 100 yards of her home.

It also bans snappers from taking pictures when mother and baby are in private, something they're already not allowed to do and which newspapers cannot print under the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct; and from taking pictures of her in the street, which is a little heavy-handed since the concept of public places is something many of our laws are based on.

Since it's been known Ms Hong had Grant's baby, the home he bought for her in Chelsea has been attended by different bits of the media most days and some nights. Some have been TV crews, in the early days, and newspaper photographers; as time has passed they have mainly given up and now it is the paparazzi agencies, who remain because a picture of Bamboo (as the baby is known) would earn big money as the public would buy more papers, or click onto more websites, to see it.

More than anything what they want is a picture of Grant with his daughter, which is tricky seeing as since she was born he has reportedly spent more time playing golf than bouncing her on his knee.

On one of his visits he beamed broadly for photographs then barked his reason for the trip was "to protect my baby" - presumably from the attentions of photographers, which is ironic considering it was his slapdash attitude towards protection in the first place which is at the root of the story, along with the public reputation as a womaniser in which he has at times gloried.

Tinglan and Bamboo are not famous in their own right, and if they do not want to be pictured publicly that's fair enough. The injunction however seems a little over-engineered, especially considering it grants these two people a right to privacy over and above that granted to anyone else in the country. There are many simpler, cheaper, friendlier ways to ensure your photograph is not taken when you do not want it to be, but those are ways this angry dad does not want to take.

That's because of Grant's long, bitter, unhappy relationship with the Press. The bits that like him, he likes; those that criticise, he does not. The parts which take his picture in public places he reserves a special loathing for and he seems to treat photographers as the earthly outriders of Satan himself, out to snatch a piece of his soul along with their shots. In general, snappers are a friendly bunch whose undying loyalty can be bought with a cup of hot tea on a cold day.

Grant has taken a very different stance to publicity around his daughter to virtually every other superfamous person. David and Victoria Beckham politely ask photographers not to picture their children on the way to school, yet expect it at a public event. They posted pictures of their new baby Harper Seven on Twitter, as Coleen and Wayne Rooney do frequently with their toddler Kai. Elton John and David Furnish, Tom and Katie Cruise, J-Lo - there is a long list of megastar parents who have a reasonably balanced view of what is public and what is private, what is good for their children or bad. Even Michael Jackson, who used to veil his children in public or dangle them from hotel balconies, seems to have raised three well-adjusted youngsters.

Perhaps it has the tang of a deal with the devil but it is far more pragmatic to accept there will be interest, and either release an official photograph in return for donation to charity, or allow the photographers to get their shot and go away. Either way the public appetite to see it is sated and those children who are the offspring of a very famous person learn, from an early age, how to negotiate one of the more difficult aspects of something they will almost certainly never escape.

To deny that shot only increases the hunger for it, in the Press as much as in the public mind. And it merely delays and makes more difficult the day that Bamboo finds out she's the child of someone very famous indeed, and possibly becomes as bitter and unbalanced about that fact as her father is.

It seems that Hugh Grant is trying to be a good dad by paying for lawyers to eradicate everything he sees as a threat; when those threats would cause far less trouble if they were handled reasonably in the first place.

But then reason is never going to be an easy concept for a man who hurls Chinese takeaways and tubs of baked beans at photographers while screaming "I hope your kids die of cancer!" and then kicks them up the bum.

"Watch Daddy as he kicks the man!"

What's the point?

SO Jeremy Clarkson has dropped the injunction he took out against his ex-wife's allegations they had an affair after he remarried, saying "it's pointless".

He means of course that the "anarchic" internet allows these secrets to sneak out and it's a waste of time and money trying to stop it, rather than the fact it is 360-degrees of wrong for anyone, much less a millionaire and someone who has been a journalist since he left school, to remove someone else's ability to express themselves.

Mr Clarkson has not been so bold as to accuse his ex-wife Alexandra Hall of lying, and nor has he explained that what he injuncted was a book she wrote about her own life, and which included a chapter or so on her first marriage and what she says happened after they divorced.

It's a subject close to my own heart but let's just state, for the record, no-one should ever have the right to injunct anyone from writing about themselves. If someone wants to stop publication of what they claim are lies, they have to take it to court and thrash it out in front of a judge. That's the way the free world works. Mr Clarkson decided he couldn't be bothered with that, and has locked himself inside a nuclear submarine while his wife and children put up with the headlines.

But while he has got us on the topic there are few other things which are pointless and we shouldn't bother with:

1. Cheryl Tweedy.
2. National debt. A debt of £500 should and could be repaid, but a debt of £500bn might as well be forgotten about because you've no chance. Let's reset all national debts to zero - the US, Zaire, Italy, Greece, everyone - because it's not like anyone was going to get paid anyway, and live within our means. Just a thought.
3. Stress. Whether it's work, love, or money, you've either got it or you haven't and you've not much control over how it comes and goes. We all end up dead; the trick is to enjoy yourself for as long as possible first.
4. Lettuce. See 3.
5. Actors offering commentary on anything except acting. I'm not interested in your views on politics, Africa or the travelling community and for goodness' sake stop making out your job is hard. Standing where you're told and reading aloud is hardly the same as being down the pit.
6. Family arguments. Unless your parents are Fred and Rose West you don't have much to be bothered about, so be nice.
7. Celebrity fitness videos. Used only by men wanting to exercise their right arm, and there are plenty of other ways to do that.
8. E4+1.
9. Media studies degrees.
10. Vegetarian bacon. If you like bacon, you are not a vegetarian.

But for starters, I'll be happy with a deep-sea accident which means Jeremy Clarkson and his vile brown teeth are locked inside a nuclear reactor for the rest of time.

Scuttle him!

Pot calls kettle a slag.

THE problem with women is that when something goes wrong they always blame themselves.

If it weren't for that pre-programmed insecurity we'd be running the universe, because there's nothing else to hold us back but the belief it's somehow always a woman's fault.

So we blame Maggie, and Hillary, and Diana, and Camilla, and not the idiots with testicles who cause a lot of the trouble in the first place.

That's why Stacey Giggs - whose husband Ryan cheated on her for EIGHT YEARS with the woman who went on to marry his brother, paid for her to abort their lovechild, had a fling with a celebrity bike called Imogen Thomas which led to an ill-advised superinjunction broken by the "anarchic" internet that was roundly criticised and led to weeks of front pages for the newspapers - blames the other woman rather than the dirty rat she married.

When she bumped into sister-in-law Natasha outside a restaurant Stacey screamed at her: "You're a f*cking slag!" Well yes, she is a slag, but it's her husband who betrayed her, not Natasha, who merely treated Stacey and her marriage in a way which unsisterly and stupid women have been doing since time immemorial. At least she managed to tell the truth in the end, as Ryan still writhed in his lies.

But then there's the "he's the father of her children" argument, and the "men can't help it" excuse, both of which are utter piffle and unfairly reduce men to the status of creatures with a mere physical function and ignore the fact they're also supposed to have morals, a brain and some bloody backbone.

Of course men do have a similar inbuilt flaw which stops them having too much power. It's called a penis and as soon as any chap thinks he is able to achieve a great feat - run the free world, for example, or convince his wife he's been working late - it flares up to defeat his ambitions just as effectively as women manage to screw each other over.

So I hope Stacey will not think me too unsisterly to point out that her husband is also a f*cking slag, and that seeing as she is prepared to put up with the crap dished out by a footballer who earns £80,000 a week and is worth a total of £34m then, I'm afraid, so is she.

Slag calls slag a slag for affair with slag. Well done humanity.

Take the rest of the day off.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

THIS man, a footballer called Ryan, went to court demanding the British justice system, the internet and the general public respect the family life he had built with his wife Stacey and two children:

 

This woman, a model called Imogen, went to court demanding the right to defend herself against the above man's accusations, and make a buck out of his misbehaviour, after which she was subject to death threats:

Meanwhile another woman, an estate agent called Natasha, knew all along the man had been cheating on his wife for eight years with her, while simultaneously betraying his brother, called Rhodri, who she was dating at the same time and later married:

Natasha is now upset after finding out Ryan was 'cheating on her' by sleeping with Imogen, even though he was married to Stacey and Natasha was married to Rhodri, and they were both cheating on people already. "It's the worst possible betrayal," she wailed, with a total lack of irony.

All of the above people have complained about how unfair everything is and that they should be treated with more respect than they have been. And not one of them understands why they're not going to get it.

Meanwhile this woman, a mum-of-two called Leanne, has married a man called Rick without money, legs or wedding tackle after he was blown up just two years after they met online:

Leanne and Rick haven't demanded anyone's respect. They haven't complained about what's happened to them, and are campaigning for soldiers to have their sperm frozen before deployment so they can still have children if they are injured as seriously as Rick was.

They love each other, and have treated the problems life has thrown at them with a resilience which is inspiring.

Leanne said: "I have never looked at another man since the day we met. He's my hero... sometimes I have a little cry but I pick myself back up because it won't change anything... He's still the same Rick."

They know and love what's on the inside, and to them that is more important than the sort of life-changing injuries which would have made others head for the hills.

That's the kind of thing we respect, and it doesn't need to be bought or enforced by the courts. It's automatic, and given freely to those that deserve it. And it's only stuff that's free that's really worth having.

Except Ryan Giggs wouldn't understand that if you spelled it out in letters of flame a foot high on his forehead - which is something I hope his wife is giving some serious thought to.

Letters to Lillys.

THE week started with a post which got more attention than any so far - one describing the details of 80 or so privacy injunctions taken out by high-profile individuals in British courts since 2006.

It increased traffic to this blog tenfold to more than 50,000 hits in a day, proof if any were needed that the public's attitude to privacy is that it's all very well but they'd still like to know what's going on.

The responses were overwhelmingly positive. But John wrote to say he thought it should have gone further and named names:

"You're very brave, aren't you? But you don't say a word about the single injunction we most need to know about -- the one that involves XXX. What is it that this XXX donor to the XXX Party doesn't want us to know? You don't even admit he exists. You're either a lily-livered coward like most of the rest, or you're a piece of shit. Only you know which...

"We live in a country that has taken rights like Habeas Corpus and just plain free speech, fought for over centuries, and thrown them away to suit the short-term ambitions of politicians, rich men and women and journalists who have forgotten what their job is supposed to be.... when there's a chance we ordinary people might actually get a glimpse into how the world ticks, there's no shortage of apologists to rush forward and tell us ordinary people, 'oh, you don't want to know about that. It's nothing but the silly antics of professional sportsmen and cretinous nonentities we have chosen to call 'celebrities'.' No, it isn't. It's about our need to know what the rich and powerful wish us not to know."

Ed: I didn't identify anyone involved because as a national newspaper journalist and blogger I'd be first in the dock if the lawyers caught wind. Were it not for the fact I like my job and paying my mortgage, I'd do it and tell the judge I held him and his law in almost total contempt. As it is I'm afraid journalists - myself included - are keeping their mouths shut as we are under more scrutiny than the average person. John is right when he says this is a bit cowardly, but I did my best with this post which has more detail than anything else I've read on the topic. The Independent followed it up the next day with a splash claiming more than 330 injunctions, most of which are actually anonymity orders related to children and vulnerable adults. The figure of 80-odd - 90 per cent of which I'd argue have a degree of public interest in them - stands. I could not agree more with John's final point.

Kevin, a reader from the US, wrote:

"One thing I don't understand, however, is that if you do indeed know about superinjunctions that are relevant to the public interest, can't you just send the information to someone outside of the UK confidentially and have them release it? I mean, if I broke a superinjunction, it's not like Britain would send the SAS after me, right?"

Ed: Thanks for the offer, but it could still be traced. And I think it's US Navy SEALs you need to be more worried about.

This post about rape being used as a weapon of war by Colonel Gaddafi's troops in Misrata got far fewer hits but plenty of praise from people insisting, in the face of all the evidence, it was the kind of news people preferred.

Kev said:

"I don't know what to say. Plenty of anti war types fly the no war in Libya without fully taking on board the murky facts. It's people like Lillys Miles who dare to inform the uninformed, or at the very least do their level best to make sure the matter doesn't get pushed aside. It appears I did have something to say. Thanks Foxster."

Darryll added:

"An excellent reminder of what the news SHOULD be about, no some 2-bit attention seeking slapper and a no-good 'family man'."

But Mark added: 

"I would like to say that I'm more than happy to read a decently written piece on the horrors of Libya on one page then turn over to see who Ryan Giggs is shagging on the next. Otherwise the papers would be awfully depressing. As Tristram Shandy sort of said: 'There's enough room in this world for hard news and fluffy shite'."

Meanwhile this briefest of posts on Kate Middleton pictured next to a normal-sized woman sent most correspondents hurrying to the fridge. Lisa said: "That pic sent me diving head-first into a tub of Ben & Jerrys!" But Lucy said: "Don't start dissing the sisters Lillys, that really is best left to the Liz Joneses of the world. FFS it's not all about what we look like!"

Finally an open letter to Sharon Shoesmith earned a lot of backslaps but also criticism. Sharon said: "This is EXACTLY how I feel about this" and Bruce added: "Beautifully put, Foxy. Hope the shameless old boot gets to read it."

'Thfc' wrote: "Brilliant blog. Just proves that when politicians and managers fuck up, real people die." And Iain added: "Her lack of humility is beyond belief. A truly despicable creature."

But Vince said: "You should criticise Ed Balls more than Shoesmith. It's his fault she could claim unfair dismissal."

And Picturo was one of a few to fume: "Disgraceful attitude to a professional who I believe was doing her best. You encourage witch hunts and inhibit professionals."

Ed: Sharon Shoesmith's been on the wrong end of a national outcry, which I was not seeking to add to. However most people in that situation would ask themselves what, if any, responsibility they had for contributing to it. She doesn't seem to have done so, and her claim to be "over the moon" and "not in the blame game" showed why she became the public face of a social services scandal - a complete lack of empathy with the overwhelming public reaction to the death of Baby P, and a deep and total self-regard. In her shoes, even believing there was nothing I could have done to save him, I would accept the buck had to stop somewhere. I'd not expect any sympathy, and certainly not over £1m in compo.

Hope you all had a nice weekend, folks. Keep the comments coming to the usual email address, Twitter and Facebook.

 Foxy out.

Do not read this.

WE all want to know what it is we're not allowed to talk about - so here it is.

Like a few other journalists, I've been sent a list of the current injunctions in the British courts. I'm going to tell you what's on it because its contents are provoking a constitutional ruckus and have already led to what has been called the biggest campaign of civil disobedience in recent times.

So I'm going to tell you everything I can without breaking the law. That's what journalists do, after all.

I have one caveat - the list is not perfect and it seems like there's several duplications on it. It's been drawn up by more than one member of the public with an interest in these things, rather than a journalist or lawyer with access to all the documents. Some of them may be speculative but on the ones I already know about its sources seem sound, so here goes.

It lists about 80 injunctions imposed since 2006. They include those already widely known - such as the footballer who had an affair with Imogen Thomas, the dumping of chemical waste by Trafigura, the one Zac Goldmith and Jemima Khan had against someone who hacked their emails, Fred Goodwin's fling with a colleague while his bank burned and the one Andrew Marr has since broken himself about his affair and possible lovechild - as well as a few others that come as a surprise even to me.

Of those 80, eight strike me as completely fair. Two involve children, and three private individuals who simply want to stay that way. The sixth is about personal pictures found on a stolen laptop and the seventh is a private medical matter. The eighth is the Goldsmith injunction.

Thirty one involve extra-marital affairs. Three are about alleged blackmail, which does not seem to have been reported to the police. Three are aimed at shutting up former employees, and six at keeping former wives or cuckolded husbands quiet. Three specifically mention prostitutes and one appears to be about financial matters.

Some are absurd: one involves allegations someone is losing their hair, while another is about a man who died after he got an injunction but it still can't be reported. One is about failures by a doctor who was criticised by a judge in a social services case, but cannot be identified.

Eleven involve allegations about a crime - either committing one, or the investigation of it. Two appear to relate to the alleged sexual assault of children.

Fifteen have been brought by sportsmen, twelve by stars of stage or screen, five by singers, and four by well-known business people. Most are millionaires, some multi-millionaires. Seven have been brought by women; the rest men.

The respondents are four of the major newspaper groups, two specific journalists, whistleblowers, and victims of misconduct of one kind or another.

I believe there would be a very strong public interest case in reporting about 20 of them. A further 17 are so well-known already, or cover behaviour that's already in the public domain, that I can't see a strong argument to ban the stories.  About a dozen more are so-so, but could be argued one way or the other. The remainder I don't have enough information to judge.

And if you try to count all those figures up and get to 80, you won't - several on the list simply don't have enough information for me to tell you any more than that an injunction exists.

To those expecting me to tell you names, dates and places: I value my liberty, and so have had to disappoint you. I've told you all I can about the things other people don't want you to know, and I've always thought that's my job.

And to any injunction lawyers reading this with a beady eye in the hope of conning more cash out of their clients: I wish you luck, because I haven't broken the law and you know it.

Some of the people on the list have. The fact we are not allowed to know it, because they've got sucked into a flawed court system where the wealthy pay for their peccadilloes to be hidden, is an outrage.

"How much for a journo to get out of jail?"

The very definition of a farce.

NEWSPAPERS in several countries not bound by an English injunction have identified on their pages a footballer who had an unreportable fling, but our media cannot show it.

The subject of an injunction has issued court proceedings in the UK against the US owners of Twitter, but they are not bound to comply and it has served only to disseminate his story to millions more than if it had just been published in the first place.

A journalist who named the subject of an injunction is facing contempt of court proceedings but cannot even be named himself under the rules of the original order even though he's accused of a crime, and a woman has been accused of blackmailing the subject of an injunction but barred from defending herself against the charge.

What is or is not in the public interest cannot even be properly discussed in a public forum, and a series of silly shagging stories are ramping up into a constitutional crisis with Parliament going head-to-head with the judiciary.

It's bizarre, it's ridiculous, and it's untenable.

We have arrived at the point where the authorities here - like those in Egypt not so long ago - are realising that the millions who use social networks have more collective power than the media, the courts and Parliament put together. A barrister speaking about it yesterday referred to Twitter in scathing tones as "the mob" and said they should not be the ones to decide what is private and what is not. But the important thing about democracy is that the mob rules whether you like it or not. And in a fight I know whose side I'd be on.

This has all come about because a few dozen people didn't have the wit to keep their trousers on. They are too stupid to realise that maintaining a good public reputation starts and ends with being honest - with themselves, with their families, and with the mob. Instead these fools are blaming other people for their indiscretions and being advised by very expensive lawyers to fritter six-figure sums in an exercise of futility when most people don't even care who they're shagging.

Sue the internet? You may as well sue the ink a newspaper uses, or the sky for raining on you. These people don't need lawyers, they need a slap and they need it yesterday.

Whether or not any of these stories were originally in the public interest was never debated before a judge imposed a gagging order stopping their revelation.  The judge heard a solicitor say "our client has a right to respect for his privacy and family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act" and rubber-stamped it without question.

The judge should have asked: "Does your client show a respect for his own privacy and family?" If he does, then injunct away. But if he has hawked his privacy, disrespected his wife and children, what right has he to demand that other people accord him that honour? He is simply dodging the consequences of his own actions, something our court system was set up to stop. I do not respect him, and nor does the mob.

Privacy is a privilege as well as a right. We can all have it if we want it, but if we're to keep hold of it we have to accept its responsibilities and not squander it.

So if you've got an injunction, here's a tip: lose it. Lose the lawyer, and ask him to pay back every penny he's taken off you. Lose the sense of entitlement which makes you think you deserve special treatment by the courts, something which was outlawed in England in 1354, for heaven's sake.

Try being honest instead. It's the only way to end this farce and if you're very lucky the mob will love you for it. If you don't - well, mobs can get very ugly. Especially when it's them under attack.

Appalling, isn't it?

Letters to Lillys.

THE right to be anonymous is almost the only item on the agenda this week - whether you are a footballer, a TV personality or, yes, a blogger.

After this post on Hugh Grant's attack on the "out-of-control" tabloid press the responses were divided right down the middle and, apart from a few examples, entirely along gender lines. Women who got in touch were in favour of the Fox while men who did the same thought the Fox was out of line.

A few correspondents were unhappy that an anonymous blogger had written on the topic of someone else demanding privacy. Richard wrote: "Surely all that divides the 'fame' of you and Hugh Grant is scale, wealth and a penis... If I subscribed to your logic it would be in the 'public interest' of your 15,000 followers to reveal your name, no?"

Jay added:

"One thing remains conspicuously absent: Fleetstreetfox's identity... She fights for the right to name and shame celebrities while hiding her own name. I also think that if tabloid journalists didn't take it upon themselves to publish every little detail of 'who stuck what where' under the guise of public interest (read: selling more papers) then nobody would be issuing injunctions. The whole thing stinks of someone trying to justify their own bad behaviour. So, Foxy, why do you hide? Perhaps you value privacy after all, unless it's somebody else's."

Ed: This is a fair point. Those who engage in a public life, whether politicians, film stars or journalists, have to accept a degree of scrutiny. Privacy for non-public figures is fair enough. But the people in the news at the moment want secrecy, to withhold the truth for personal benefit. I am not doing that - I am telling the truth about my trade, as much as I know of it. If I were named the chances are I would be sacked, and the journalistic insight I could offer The Reader via this blog would be reduced to almost zero. That seems to defeat the purpose.
Secondly I do not seek to hide any personal shame, in fact I have a book to be published which is full of it, but if I were named then others (perhaps mistakenly) would be identified among its characters, which does not seem fair to them.
Thirdly, I am not using vast personal wealth to change the laws of this country without it being voted for by anyone. Lastly of course this would all be far less fun if you knew I was fat, boring, old Jane Smith of the Daily Globe; I believe you prefer it this way.

This post diverged from the injunction issue to cover the events in the Middle East, which just as with tabloid newspapers was welcomed for being more worthy but got far fewer hits on the site.

Kev said: "As you rightly point out, and at the risk of duplicating your efforts, it's news that is being pushed further away sadly."

David added: "Libya's not about saving the goodies from the baddies any more than Iraq ever was - it's only ever about getting our hands on the cookie jar. Syria = no oil to get excited about = no intervention..simples."

In an effort to sex things up there was this post about some of the scandals we'd never know if it weren't for the tabloids.

Alistair said: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. If you want to avoid publicity, don't do a public job!"

Jaysus added: "Most journalists today are ruthless exploitative opportunistic hypocrites, turkeys don't vote for Christmas."

Ruth wrote:

"When the people who lap this stuff up have moved on to judging someone else's shortcomings, this man and his family will be picking up the pieces for years to come. The recent partial lifting of Fred Goodwin's injunction is a slightly different matter as the personal issues may have compromised the professional, with a practical impact on some members of the public. That is a matter of judgement. Similarly the Prescott affair: on the one hand should anyone care if he's shagging a colleague? No. Using a publicly funded grace and favour apartment to conduct his liaisons on 'company' time? Well, maybe. As for bent politicians, expose them, as they are the true hypocrites."

Niamh replied: "America doesn't call it the First Amendment for nothing. A free press has to be free! Well said. As usual!" And Annette said: "Jeffrey Archer would probably be a grand old statesman of Cameron's cabinet now if it wasn't for the tabloids. Instead, he perjured himself in Court, perverted the course of justice and did bird in Belmarsh."

The post on how everything always seems to be a woman's fault got, as could be predicted, a lot of female high-fives. Polly said: "My ex-husband 'excused' my deflating his expensive bike tyres after he had an affair! My fault obviously... Great blog!" Darryll added: "Short, sweet, straight to the point, and so true."

Greg was less impressed: "Sorry, just can't take the misandristic whining any longer. Self-pity is so unattractive."

Junky, who I think is a man, said: "Re blog. Brilliant. Am off to don a man-burqa as we speak."

Howard wrote: "What I think of your blog - bloody great. You're my top of the blogs and pushed Guido into second place."

Which is nice.

Enjoy your rapture parties, folks - and when you're hungover tomorrow, remember it only feels like the world is ending.

Foxy out.

Think of the things we'd never know.

THE tabloid press is under attack; not for the first time or the last.

We're used to it. It's healthy, and I don't mind in the least. Privacy is different to secrecy and the more that gets talked about the better for everyone.

Hugh Grant, Jeremy Clarkson, Jemima Khan, Kenneth Clarke and various other self-centred whingebuckets think tabloids are "out of control" and need to be brought to heel, quick smart, with some privacy laws which carefully delineate things the Press must stop doing.

So here's a few things we wouldn't know if it weren't for the punchy, fighty, mischievious, celebrity-poking, no-privacy-law-thankyou tabloids:

* The identities of the five men widely-known to be involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

* That John Leslie is a sex-pig.

* That Chris Huhne left his wife following an affair mere weeks after parading his happy family in election leaflets, that she has since accused him of bullying her into taking speeding points, and as a result of this coverage Essex Police will question him over perverting the course of justice.

That the former leader of the Lib Dems is an alcoholic, that the head of the IMF has a long history of aggressive sexual behaviour, that Prince Charles' marriage was blighted by his long affairs, that Andrew Marr had a super-injunction, that Katie Price is anything but what she lets her TV show broadcast... the list goes on. And yes, the tittle-tattle which is what millions of people really buy the papers to read.

We're not perfect, we make mistakes, we cross the line sometimes. But we usually get pushed back pretty quick, and I'd far rather have an aggressive tabloid press than a supine spin machine for PRs' press releases.

Otherwise we'd all think Max Mosley was just a public-spirited, charming old grandad.

You're welcome, Hugh.

WHEN Four Weddings and a Funeral was released in 1994 Hugh Grant became an overnight star, a romantic, foppish, dopey hero on screen and in the minds of millions of fans around the world.

He got a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination, and went on to play the same romantic, foppish dope in quite a few other films.

A year later, just as he was becoming used to adulation, he was arrested for lewd conduct in a public place after being caught with hooker Divine Brown in a car off Sunset Strip. He was fined $1,100, given two years' probation and had to go on an AIDS awareness course.

The newspapers had a field day - the fop was really a cad, and it was such an about-turn in public perception that everyone was gripped to see what would happen to him and that nice pair of boobs Liz Hurley.

Meanwhile poor Hugh was complaining he had become typecast, saying: "People made two assumptions: One was that I was that character - when in fact nothing could be further from the truth... and the other frustrating thing was that they thought that's all I could do."

But his movies began to tank. Filmgoers associated him with scandal, and he couldn't quite pull off the bumbling-sweet-guy act any more.

Then film bosses realised that 'nice Hugh' had been sexualised, and offered him different work. He played womanisers, cads and rotters to critical acclaim and of course, with such a famous name, studios began shelling out millions of pounds to get him in their movies.

He enjoyed a string of beautiful girlfriends, quite a few multi-million pound houses, and a cavalcade of supercars. The films have dried up of late, but then he's so rich now he doesn't need to work.

In short, public humiliation in the international Press was the best thing that ever happened to Hugh Grant.

So I am not quite sure why he has thrown himself so wholeheartedly into the row about celebrity injunctions. He has not, to my knowledge, got an injunction out. He does dislike the Press quite profoundly, although his habit of telling photographers "I hope your kids die of cancer" is a little extreme.

He says the Press has no right to intrude on the private lives of people who have simply had the good fortune to be successful. In which he is right. Why would anyone write about him purely on the basis of his acting skills?

We do have a right though to write about criminals, and that is what Hugh was when he pleaded guilty to getting his winky out in a public place. He could not have injuncted it had he tried, because it was a matter of public record. I think it is this fact - that his sex life became public property and there was nothing he could do about it - which so riles him.

Since then, he has remained in the public eye purely and simply because of that episode - earning millions as a direct result of it - and persistently dates people who are famous or otherwise newsworthy. So his sex life has remained public property to some extent, something which must infuriate him seeing as he hasn't even been caught with a hooker again.

But why is he so in favour of injunctions? Had he been able to keep his greatest shame out of the newspapers, he would have faded into obscurity 10 years ago.

Perhaps he thinks he has got where he is today purely on the strength of his acting ability. If that's the case, where is his Oscar? Oh yes, it's in the same place as my Pulitzer.

The problem with the privacy debate is this - there isn't one. There is no massive groundswell of opinion, no campaign being backed by the public. In fact seeing as traffic on Twitter went up 14 per cent when someone tweeted the names of people linked to recent injunctions, the public seem to be pretty much in favour of openness on the topic.

This 'debate' is no such thing. It's just a slanging match with people like me on one side, who have a vested interested in reporting whatever we like, and on the other a dozen or so rich people who have all been embarrassed at some point and are having a whinge about it. The only reason Hugh Grant is getting air time is that he increases audience figures because he's famous, and he's famous because he was caught with a hooker.

I think Hugh should stop whining, get some perspective and enjoy driving around in the £143,325 Ferrari California which he would not have been able to buy were it not for the Press. That's what I'd do, and Divine Brown has the same idea.

She was an abused woman whose life finally improved after their joint arrest. She is off the streets, the £1m fees from newspaper interviews paid for her children to go to private school, and she is living happily in Atlanta with a fiance and a music production company.

She said she thanks God for sending her Hugh Grant, because it changed her life; and yet again has proved that a hooker often has a lot more heart and common sense than the clients who think a human can be rented by the hour.

If Hugh Grant, rather than launching an embittered one-man crusade, stopped to think about it or talk to anyone outside a Chelsea dinner party he might feel grateful to the Press. And he should ring up every journalist who's ever written about him, good or bad, and say thank you.

And when he's done that he should put a sock in it.

Boo hoo, poor me.

Bend over, Max Mosley.

ARROGANCE is normally defined as a sense of superiority or self-importance; but now we can add 'acting like Max Mosley' to the dictionary description.

He appears to be on a one-man crusade to make sure we never forget his German-speaking, military-themed, in-no-way-Nazi sex orgy which was caught on tape by one of the hookers he employed to mistreat him.

I bet his wife wishes he would just shut the hell up. Perhaps she ought to consider an injunction? Or a ball gag.

Today Mr Mosley was shafted by the European Court of Human Rights in his latest effort at reminding us what a pillock he is. He wanted newspapers to be forced to reveal their stories to the subjects of them two days before publication, so they could be injuncted by the wealthy - he wasn't too bothered about what someone without money might do in the same situation.

For the record, Mr Mosley, we already do just that. We generally always tell a spokesman, agent or member of the public what we're about to do, so they can have a right of reply or, if we've got something wrong, tell us before the presses start rolling. There is no newspaper editor in the country who wants to publish something that's not right - aside from the professional embarrassment, it's expensive and we do not have the same kind of money to burn as multi-millionaire ex-motorsports bosses.

There are a few occasions when we don't tell them, and this is when a) we've got them bang to rights and b) they'll cover it up. A criminal so warned will destroy the evidence before the police turn up; a corrupt politician will go unexposed; a paedophile will wipe their hard drive. And yes, a shagger gets an injunction.

The trouble with celebrities is that they think it's all about them. It's not. There's an entire world full of people out there who are affected by this kind of over-inflated and entirely wrong righteousness.

Aside from newspapers there are other people who get injuncted willy-nilly. Councils injunct parents in child adoption battles, businesses stop whistleblowers and MPs, and charity campaigners have been blocked from exposing corruption.

In my entire career I have never heard of an injunction which saved someone being wrongly defamed. Each and every one has been about a story which is 100 per cent accurate, and twice as embarrassing. What Mr Mosley wants is not a better-behaved Press but one in which public figures, whether they are politicians or celebrities or corporate chiefs, are off-limits.

Well, they're not. No-one, anywhere in the world, wants them to be out of firing range apart from those whose backsides are already raw from a public spanking by the Press.

At the time of his orgy Mr Mosley was the highly-paid, elected head of the international motorsports federation which represented not just 200m-odd Formula One fans but every single car owner on the planet. He was fair game, a public figure with a private shame, and had the original Nazi-theme allegations held water there would have been an indisputable public interest in exposing him. He believes that because it was later held not to be a Nazi orgy it was a private expression of his sexuality, and launched a personal battle to bring newspapers under his kind of control. He does not want your privacy to be protected - he wants secrecy for those caught with their trousers down. He wants powerful people to do as they please without criticism.

Well, let's set him straight. I do not know how many prostitutes Mr Mosley has met, much less bothered to speak to beyond agreeing the safety word, but I have interviewed plenty. They include £20-a-pop street walkers, small-time massage parlour madams, dominatrices and high-class hookers charging £3,000-a-night. Some hated their lives, most were resigned, and one or two told me brightly how it was their choice and they had very flexible working hours. Each and every one was damaged, each had an addiction of one kind or another, and all had been the victim of abuse. And that's before they started selling themselves.

So I criticise Mr Mosley for supporting that trade in unhappy women, because he has continued their abuse. I criticise him for the full awfulness of the orgy, which was far nastier than the spanking which was all family-friendly newspapers could report; I criticise him for being turned on by rape, for trotting it all out over and again despite what his wife must feel, and I criticise him for thinking that everyone who disagrees with him is a deviant.

And I refuse to take lectures in morality from a vile man with the ethics of a dictator who considers abuse to be a form of foreplay.

A letter to the famous.

DEAR celebrities:

You are rich and famous, and seem to enjoy it. You like the free clothes, the frequent holidays, and appear to need the adoration. I do not mind this in the least, because I would not want your life for all the tea in China. I like riding on the Tube; I don't want to put my face on before I go to the shops; I prefer to do the walk of shame unpapped.

So please accept the following advice as being from somebody who is not jealous of your job but does know more about it than the average bear and can look upon it with an objectivity that perhaps you, your loved ones and paid sycophants cannot.

Here it is: fame is a pie, and you have to eat all of it. You don't get just to eat the cream off the top but have to force down the rest as well.

So when someone comes up to you in the street and wants an autograph, smile and say yes even when you feel rubbish. That's the person who pays your £2million mortgage, right there. If there are photographers hanging around they'll soon go away if you're boring. If you want to sleep with the world's most beautiful or interesting people, the rest of us will want to know about it. If you rely on a certain public image to make millions for film studios, record companies and football clubs then, I'm afraid, you ought to do your best to make sure it stands up to scrutiny.

Yes, it's tittle-tattle. But it's your fans that buy the newspapers to read about you, and thus feed the appetite for more. As a result they buy your music, your books, your tickets. Would you be happy in a world where you had no fans, no adoration, no wealth?

Be aware that if you are one of those celebrities who phones up picture agencies, who cuts a deal for a percentage of the syndication fee, who 'makes friends' with showbiz columnists, whose mortgage and self-worth rely solely on being a public figure, then you have ordered a bigger pie. For this you get more cream, but also more of everything else.

And if you do something you oughtn't - if you shag Wayne Rooney's hooker, enjoy spanking women while dressed up in rubber, get a colleague sacked when your affair turns sour, pretend to be a family man while cheating with a Big Brother trollop or try to stop an ex-wife writing a book about you, for example - it really is best just to cough to it.

The alternative of hiding the truth, of lying to your partner, of spending £100,000 on lawyers and bending the law to suit yourself and cover up repugnant behaviour is not viable in the long term. Half such stories, were they published, would have faded after a week and rarely been mentioned again. And the law, flawed as it is, generally snaps back if you push it too far.

If I didn't know better I'd say that super-injunctions had been invented by either a newspaper editor or a showbiz agent. They lead only to more gossip, more newsprint and a much bigger bollocking from your wife than you would originally have had.

All of us have things about our jobs we don't like, but have to put up with. Teachers, management consultants, hairdressers, dustmen, journalists. I hate doorstepping bereaved relatives, but I know that if anyone has to do it I'd be better at it than plenty of others, and it's the price I pay for those good days when I get a phone call telling me to get on a plane RIGHT NOW.

When the bad starts to outweigh the good, I'll change my job. You can do the same - you can send the pie back, if you like. Fame fades just like newsprint and if it is all too much of a pain you can retrain as a tree surgeon. Plenty of exercise, less need for injunctions, but fewer fans I'm afraid.

Alternatively, keep your dick in your pants.

Lots of love,

Foxy.

Letters to Lillys.

WHILE this is not a newspaper there are some inky traditions worth sticking to, and one of those is letters from The Reader.

Those who criticise must take the same with good grace, even if it's written in capital letters, using green ink, or in perfectly-scanned rhyming couplets with frequent mention of corgis.

So here's a selection from this week's mailbox, edited for sense and grammar but otherwise untouched. Where you see (...) text has been removed.

The post which got most attention was this one on Andrew Marr recanting his own newspaper super-injunction.

An unrelated Andrew wrote:

"I agree with your article and in no way am I an apologist for Marr. But you wrote: 'If only he kept his trousers on first.' When a man has sex with a woman it is either consensual sex or rape. As you seem to be in no way apportioning any blame to the woman, do I take it you are inferring rape? Just curious. But I have to say, I imagined Marr going around dropping his trousers every time he saw a woman and didn't know what to think."

Ed: For the benefit of lawyers there is no suggestion of rape. Marr's injunction and its effect on his journalistic credibility was the topic of the post, not the morality of his mistress. If she pops her head over the parapet she's fair game. Another day perhaps.

Henry was stirred enough to write at length on Fleet Street Fox's own morality and that of The Other Woman in Marrgate:

"I wish I could make some plea to any conscience or kindness you may have, just so you might think first before trotting out an article like the one you wrote about Andrew Marr... It might be worthwhile looking at your own behaviour.

(...)

"How you and others crow over it all, how easy you find it to believe he has no feelings about it. You may live or work with people who think 'he can take it'. Anyone who says that is simply giving a lame excuse for their own cruelty at another's suffering.

(...)

(...)

(...)

"The mother... slept with him, after all, and apparently someone else as well. She happily accepted payments from him... on the pretext that the child was his. Could she not have admitted there was doubt and established paternity sooner? She might have saved the child some pain there...How is Andrew Marr to blame?

(...)

"Do you have ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL that he has washed his hands of this child? ... This whole sentence 'reeks' [of] someone who thinks that Marr's feelings are of no consequence whatsoever, in a situation where he is powerless and probably ill-treated. I'm afraid you just don't want to see why what you have written is so venomously cruel. If that is the case, I feel sorry for you. Also, it seems very hypocritical of you, frankly, to take the moral high-ground about 'the interests of the child' in the middle of a piece of writing full of such spite and schadenfreude. But I guess I'm wasting my time telling you this. I think I can imagine the reception this mail will get."

Ed: I refer The Reader to the original post, and thence to a dictionary. The post was neither personally malicious nor born of a desire to harm but, as should be clear, about the ethics of a journalist injuncting the Press.

Nick was more interested in the identity of Marr's mistress:

"Please help your readers work out who Andrew Marr’s mistress may be. With only a passing interest in politics, we don’t have your comprehensive knowledge. My personal list of suspects is limited: Ann Leslie, Julia Hartley Brewer, the woman who used to be the The Whip on The Sun, Orla Guerin, Catherine Bennett. Am I close?"

Ed: Not even lukewarm.

Ian wanted to point out that after many years as a journalist "I can count on one hand the number of colleagues I know who have not adulterated". He went on to name and shame a few, which I won't repeat here because I don't want to be injuncted, but it included the phrases "respectable erection", "The Westminster Hotel" and "the photographer's missus".

He added:

"If you wish to do this in your blog feel free as long as you add [Ian] Hislop is not a newspaperman, he is an ex-schoolmaster and the most powerful argument there is against nepotism. Our trade invented hypocrisy. By the way do put me on your mailing list because like all fellow hypocrites I love a gossip."

Finally we have "R" who asked not to be named but wanted to say:

"I've only recently discovered your blog, and love it. I write because, as a retired journo who worked for many years out of Fleet Street itself (going back to when typewriters were tools of the trade), I know it's important sometimes when someone out there notices and appreciates what one writes.
"I started to read one of your posts, and in no time had gone through all I could find on the blog site. I was initially sceptical that the author was 30-something -- too much wisdom packed into so few years. But having listened to the R4 link that one of the blogs referenced, I'd accept it may be the case.
"That being so, I reckon you will go far. Your style puts you apart."

Which is nice.

On a separate note, a personal thank you to my Twitter friend @ReynardCity who kindly spent a lot of time producing some artwork for this site, which for technical reasons to do with Blogger doesn't work. But if fox-based sexy cartoons are your thing, I recommend his website to you.

Foxy out.

Well said that man.

IT'S an interesting time to be a journalist, what with the phone-hacking scandal and public debate over the value of the traditional kiss-and-tell.

But political blogger Guido Fawkes - who busted the Marr injunction several years ago - has hit the nail on the head with this post: "Muzzle the Press by protecting the privacy of public figures and public life will be even more dominated by unreported scoundrels."

The first rule of journalism.

THERE are many cardinal sins in Fleet Street but with his super-injunction Andrew Marr broke the most serious of all - 'never become the story'.

To protect the lovechild he thought was his is fair enough; the story was not in the public interest, merely of interest to the public. That the gag had the knock-on effect of sparing his blushes and keeping him in his £600,000-a-year position as the BBC's top political commentator was, I am sure, a happy coincidence.

But it was the job that ultimately proved his and the injunction's undoing. Had he been any other kind of journo, famous or not, the court order would have held indefinitely. It was his position as a high-profile, impartial interrogator for the publicly-funded state broadcaster which made him, in his own words, "a stinking hypocrite".

It was that smell which meant every hack in the street knew about his affair, the child, and his mistress. Marr got one of the first super-injunctions, which bans anyone from even saying they've been injuncted. When we've been gagged by one of our own it tends to stick in the throat, so word spread out of vengeance as much as a desire for a good gossip.

The injunction also rendered him incapable of doing his job - the one we all pay him for. He was not the type to interview John Terry, fortunately, but whenever he was presented with a politician whose character was in doubt Marr knew - and every journalist watching him knew - that he could not ask the questions he should.

As a result Private Eye and its impish editor Ian Hislop, who quite rightly wanted to report that licence-fee payers' money should not be spent on gagging the Press, went to court. They overturned the 'super' part of the injunction and it became more widely known that Marr had injuncted something.

Next week the Eye was going back to court to try to overturn the rest of the injunction. Aware he was going to have to continue shelling out tens of thousands of pounds to fight what was probably going to be a losing battle, Marr came clean.

He said he felt "uneasy" but it was the right thing to do "at the time" to repair his damaged marriage and protect the child involved.

What he didn't say is that in the meantime he had discovered, via a DNA test, that the child he had been paying maintenance for was not his. His decision to speak now carries the unpleasant reek of a man who has utterly washed his hands of a seven-year-old who for some years will have regarded him as her father. Setting aside the irresponsibility of unprotected sex and of an affair outside marriage, while that child has no legal claim upon him there is surely a degree of consideration she still deserves.

It does seem however that Marr has finally realised it was getting the injunction in the first place which made the story of legitimate public interest. It also caused years of gossip for his wife and mistress to endure, and now all of Fleet Street will get a second bite of the apple where, originally, only one paper had the story. The same is true of every other celebrity gagging order - first there's the nameless details, accompanied by a silhouette, then the internet speculation, the cheeky asides in gossip columns. Eventually, and inevitably, it all comes out.

It always does. It always will. That's another of the rules of journalism. Number four, I think.

So rather than having a month of embarrassment Marr and his nearest and dearest have had years of innuendo, and now will have significantly more. If the identity of the child is revealed she will be known forever as 'Not Andrew Marr's Lovechild'. He has done everyone concerned a massive disservice in trying to hush it up: the only bonus is that now he will be labelled a "jug-eared love-rat" every time he's ever mentioned in print.

That's not to say journalists are not all hypocrites to some extent. We're as flawed as any other humans, but we have to be able to criticise or praise those that deserve it without our personal reputations overshadowing our work, and that means keeping our heads below the parapet and our noses (relatively) clean. A hack can have a fling with a celebrity, indulge in misbehaviour or push the boundaries of privacy so long as a) they don't get caught and b) no-one cares. Once those actions become of public interest the journalist becomes the story, and that makes it impossible to do the job - it's for this reason, and this alone, that Andy Coulson left the Screws of the World and, later, his job as spinmeister to Prime Minister Dishface.

As a result of all this Marr can never question a politician about their private life, however legitimate the enquiry could be. He cannot comment or ask about fatherhood, paternity rights, the legal system, the creeping privacy law no-one in this country has voted for, or even raising a child when arguably his actions will have harmed the one involved in this story.

Andrew Marr should never work as a journalist again. He probably will, because the BBC can be very stupid like that, but his credibility is shot, his impartiality is gone and his reputation is ruined.

If only he'd kept his trousers on, hey?

Jug-eared love rat Andrew Marr.

Twitching the burqa.

IF I stood on a street corner shouting my thoughts I'd never know what bits people noticed; at least, not until a policeman spoke to me about it.

But after just one week of writing this blog I can see, via the Blogger statistics, that so far 11,000 different people have read my ramblings. Presumably just to see if I was going to break one or all of the 30-odd celebrity injunctions currently in force, but you're all very welcome just the same.

I can see some people found me by Googling "who is fleet street fox?", others via my Twitter and Facebook pages or other websites (all linked on the right), and that two people came across me by doing a search for "Kate Middleton bland" which at least shows I'm not the only one bored by our future queen.

Readers are generally from the UK, but there are a lot in the US, Canada and Australia. Hundreds of hits have come from Belgium, Russia, Israel, France and Germany. There seems to be quite a lot of interest from the Philippines (Sex tourists? Gap year students?) and this week, for some reason, 30 hits from Poland.

But by far the most interesting fact is the 212 people who have read me in Iran.

How did they find me? Are they among the rich elite who have enough internet access to browse, is there a Jeremy Clarkson fan base in Tehran, or is there that much worldwide interest about which famous actor used the services of Wayne Rooney's hooker?

Perhaps it's the Savak secret police creeping about behind the national firewall. Maybe the mullahs are looking for evidence of how corrupt and wicked the West can be and think a female tabloid hack represents all that is satanic in the world.

But I hope a few of them are reading from behind a burqa. I hope a 30-something divorcee in London bumbling around and jabbering on about silly things does something for them, although heaven knows what it might be.

It's probably the Top Gear fan club. But, whether it is or not, if anyone's reading in Tehran - salam, welcome. Take off the burqa and sit down with the rest of us.

It's time to put a ferret up them.

WITH another injunction ruling yesterday - this one about "office banter" which led to a newspaper hearing about a high-profile affair - it's surely time for Fleet Street to pull its finger out.

If anyone Googled the publicly-reported facts of the latest case it would not take long to figure out the identities of those involved. They arguably should be named because the married male star managed to get his female co-star sacked after their affair was over. A cad twice over, and how many office flings end the same way?

Despite that three appeal court judges say identities of ill-doers can be kept secret to stop their children being bullied, a precedent which leads in the end to the same protection being afforded to criminals, the corrupt, and all sorts of wrong-uns.

As Lord Justice Ward himself said in his ruling: "To restrict publication simply to save the blushes of the famous could have a wholly undesirable, chilling effect on the necessary ability of publishers to sell their newspapers. We have to enable sales if we want to keep our newspapers. Unduly to fetter their freedom... is to undermine the pre-eminence of the deserved place of the Press as a powerful pillar of democracy."

Fleet Street exists today only as an idea, but if the industry is to have a future it must uphold the principles on which it relies.

All the editors should get together and publish the full list of current injunctions and who's done what to whom. The courts can't send all of us to jail, it just takes a united front and a bit of gumption. Put a ferret up them, as Kelvin would say.

Injunct and be damned.

ANOTHER week, another injunction. This time a world-famous actor who employed the services of a £195-a-pop hooker who, as is so often the way with hookers, turned out not only to sell her story but also to have bedded Wayne Rooney.

Now, none of us really give a damn who Mr Actor Man had sex with. The only reason the public are interested in such shenanigans is a prurient and very human fascination with the love lives of the others, just in case they are doing something we're not, or worse, doing it better than us. That's the way of the world and it's not going to change unless someone finds a way to rewrite our DNA or explain the sexual attraction of Jeremy Clarkson.

So why do newspapers, which are rarely safe on the moral high ground, offer up this very common denominator? Well, three reasons. First because news is a business, with shareholders and profit margins like every other industry, and they'll print whatever sells. Sex, crime, gossip, marriage break-ups, and people off the telly are all grist for the mill. If it goes on, it goes in.

Secondly, Fleet Street takes a mischievous approach to the great and the good. If they deserve the pedestal let them climb up and stand on it - but never, under any circumstances, should they feel safe up there. They're going to get the odd poke just to see if they wobble and that's as it should be in a free and fair society.

So if a politician tells us how to live our lives then we get to keep an eye on theirs, too. John Major's ill-fated Back to Basics campaign in the early 1990s would have collapsed a lot sooner - taking his government with it - if we'd known at the time he'd been cheating on his wife with Edwina Currie. Someone who makes the laws and then breaks them should be exposed for it, however minor and yes, former Solicitor General Harriet Harman who chats on her mobile while driving and then has an accident, that does mean you.

Celebrities who supplement their fortunes by selling their privacy to glossy magazines in return for a good write-up and a big cheque will have that family life scrutinised by others too, however much Katie Price hates the idea. An athlete who wants to represent their country and captain the national football team doesn't have to be an angel, John Terry, but most of us expect him to keep his pants up while he's doing it. If an average man gets named in the local paper when he's arrested with a prostitute then so does Hugh Grant, although he got a little more space devoted to his story.

In such ways the Press promotes a pleasing kind of equality - everyone's fair game, and we're all the same kind of fallible idiot, no matter how rich or pretty or clever. There is no 'them and us', there's just 'us'.

The third reason is by far the best. We do it because we can.

Because can you imagine what would happen if we couldn't?

If we stopped poking, and pushing, and prodding at everyone and everything, it would not be long before someone on a pedestal realised that not only could they abuse their position, but more importantly they could get away with it. The rich, the powerful, those with something to hide. I like living in a free country. I don't want that to change.

So how does Mr Actor Man and his wandering willy affect our freedoms? Well, I'll tell you. Newspapers have a finite budget for legal bills. That pot - bigger at some papers than others - goes to pay lawyers, court fees, and settle disputes. The legal firms who take on newspapers often do so on a no-win, no-fee basis to the client and charge very high fees to the paper if they win. The potential cost can be so high that often Editors have to be pragmatic and settle a claim, even one they think they can win, simply so their budgets can live to fight another day. For example I would not be surprised to learn Sienna Miller earns more from writing letters to newspapers than she does from acting.

So if someone famous gets targeted by a newspaper - and the famous are pretty rich to begin with - and they don't fancy being on the front page, they can afford to really go to town. If they want an injunction it's often granted temporarily, blocking publication until a newspaper can prove the story is true and argue the subjects should be named, which can be an expensive and drawn-out process. Then they can have super-injunctions, which bans the subjects from even saying they have been injuncted.

Breaking those injunctions carries the risk of massive fines, jail time, and confiscation of personal property. Of late, lawyers have begun to demand that not only newspapers can be injuncted like this but also the source of the story - so a member of the public is banned, under threat of financial and personal ruin, from speaking to anyone about their own personal life, or even saying they have been banned at all.

And where celebrities successfully blunder in, the corrupt soon follow. The same type of injunctions have been issued against those trying to expose political and corporate wrongdoing, with the added weight of hyper-injunctions which ban the source from discussing the story with their MP and gagging its discussion in Parliament - supposedly the last bastion of free speech in the country.

There are more than 30 celebrity-based injunctions around at the moment, by the last count. A lot of them are very silly, like Mr Actor Man who apparently "kisses like a virgin", enjoys unspeakable things being done to him with a sex toy, and whose identity I know but can't tell you under threat of everything outlined above.

He's got the injunction because he doesn't want his wife to find out, or their friends, or to have his employment prospects ruined or to be publicly embarrassed. He's taken the kind of court action available only to the privileged few and perhaps believes he is fighting to protect the privacy of the common man, as well as that of his dirty linen. But every time a person of wealth or power, or simply ego, gets to bend the law around themselves I feel a little more uneasy.

It sets an unpleasant precedent. A rich man caught with his trousers down demands the courts treat him as though he's better than everyone else in the country, and a week later a rich man whose company's done something dreadful will gag an MP. If the Press stopped testing the boundary between privacy and secrecy the two would soon become blurred. And a hooker has as much right to speak freely as a corporate whistleblower.

I'm not trying to claim that every newspaper editor who publishes a kiss and tell, or tries to overturn an injunction about a footballer and a Big Brother contestant, does so in the interests of freedom of speech rather than getting a good yarn in the paper. But this is the back story journalists all know and which perhaps you don't, and goes some way to explaining the impish attitude Fleet Street takes to certain people and situations.

So I hope you understand when I say, despite how his wife might feel, I hope Mr Actor Man's identity is revealed. I'm glad Jeremy Clarkson's hotel room trysts with a 6ft blonde have been published. I'm thrilled the super-injunction about oil firm Trafigura dumping chemical waste failed, that we know what a dirty dog John Terry is, and that I think Sienna Miller ought to accept when she's in a public place the public has every right to take her picture.

Injunctions are often granted under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which outlines a respect for private and family life. The law was not designed to protect a secret life, and the two are very different. If Mr Actor Man wants to protect his family he should stop putting his winky in hookers, and if he wants my respect he'll have to start by decrying the inequality of a justice system which this week named the fallen woman but not the dirty dog who paid for her.

And next time you hear a celebrity talk about their privacy, remember the advice which Paul McCartney's former PR man Geoff Baker used to give: "If you don't want to get caught doing it - don't do it."