Parts Private

Dear Reader

If you live in a cage like me, then you may find all the fuss about privacy hard to understand. Poor apes, such as yours truly, must  live their entire lives on display even when we are doing our monkey business. Think about that, next time you are on the toilet how you would feel if you had to answer nature's call in front of gallery of Japanese tourists taking pictures and Italian schoolchildren throwing sweets.  And then there's the captive breeding programme where we are supposed to get it on like a furry Amsterdam sex show, whilst you video the action on a smart phone and post links to your friends via Facebook. Now you know why gorillas in zoos look so annoyed.

But then this ape got to thinking about privacy and which parts should be private, surveying your antics involving injunctions, super-injunctions and hyper-injunctions. For those not in the know, hyper-injunctions are new type of legal device like super-injunctions but they also apply to other dimensions and alternate realities. A hyper-injunction means that if you publish a story in an alternate universe where JFK wasn't shot, dolphins can talk and the sky is purple and it mentions a certain footballer by name you can still be sued.

A right to privacy is a misleading concept in these cases in the media as no genuine intrusion of privacy has taken place. If someone breaks into your home, hides in your wardrobe and takes pictures of you and your partner doing the horizontal jiggle then your privacy has definitely been invaded. Either that or it's a weird sex game.  Likewise, when you get in the shower and you find a stranger there, he better be a plumber or it's time to call the police. There is a definite violation of your private realm, innuendo intended.  But preventing someone talking about your love life is very different, as your privacy now extends to a gagging order on someone else. Moreover, do we really want to live in a state where someone is not free to say who we  have had sex with? In the case of Katie Price, the answer is yes, because life is too short, otherwise the answer is no. Freedom of speech isn't simply the right to create erudite articles on the latest play at the Royal Court or a scintillating open-air opera, it is also the freedom to say foolish or salacious things.

Even if you try to enforce this militant version of privacy,  in the digital age it's impossible to keep anything private. Google knows more about you than you do yourself, which is why thanks to my browsing history I am now on the run. Note to self, stop researching how to make your own explosives on the internet,  it gives anti-terrorist officers the wrong idea and apparently being curious isn't a defence. For those of you not in hiding, everything you have ever done has been logged somewhere  on CCTV, on your phone or on your browsing history. Big Brother is watching you and will Tweet his story within seconds if you're famous and you've been naughty.

An absurd parallel world exists of court orders and injunctions, then there's the real world where the name of the TV personality who's been trollope-clinching is all over the internet. Making laws over things you cannot possibly control brings the law into disrepute, you might as well injunct the Moon. Little bit of legal trivia,  Mohammed Al Fayed did in fact sue for the Moon for helping Prince Philip kill his son.

Although there is one change that might make amends, even if those in the news have to accept that everything they do, especially if it involves their penis/vagina, will also be in the news. Paparazzi photographers should be classified as vermin, like crows or wood pigeons and therefore fair game if you have a shotgun license. We get to read salacious stories about celebrity indiscretions, they get to gun down paps. So from now if you are well-known, don't shoot the messenger, shoot the photographer.