Invading your own privacy

I genuinely sympathise with celebrities pursued by photographers. But for every one who has their privacy invaded there is another energetically invading their own privacy to advance their career. Two cases in point from this week.

Up and coming rugby player Danny Cipriani (20) and model girlfriend Kelly Brook (28) are allegedly snapped by a passing paparazzo while enjoying a quiet cup of coffee outside a cafe in Notting Hill. Whoever matched up this pair must really think we're all stupid. The flawless focus on that picture indicates that the photographer had been given enough time to take Polaroids. And the kiss! I've seen more convincing oscular contact between an eight-year-old boy and a moustachioed aunt. Revenge is already being wreaked by Cipriani's team-mates. God knows how much worse he's going to find it when he comes up against a gang of vengeful Celts in the Home Internationals.

Then there's Brad Pitt taking pictures of his wife breast-feeding for the cover of that well-known organ for the nursing mother, W. Exactly where do they get the conceit from? Look! Look! We can do things just the same as you proles do them, only more beautifully. We were so taken with ourselves we couldn't bear for our private pictures to be private for one minute longer.

These are the people who have been the victim and beneficiary of so much publicity that they literally don't believe anything about their own lives until they read about it in the paper.