In sickness and in stealth

The landmark court action taken by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas against Hello! magazine was the legal equivalent of an All Ireland hurling final between Tipperary and Clare – apart from those directly involved and their supporters, most right-thinking people couldn’t decide which side they’d prefer to see lose.

Subsequently, the eventual result was probably the best we could have hoped for – Hello! got a slap on the wrist, while Zeta-Jones and Douglas got a long overdue slap in the face.

For those of you with lives so full and enriched that you may not be familiar with the minutiae of the case, allow me to fill you in. Having sold the exclusive rights of their wedding snaps to OK! magazine for £1 million, the Hollywood couple were appalled to discover that despite the fact that all the guests had been searched on their way into the wedding, the magazine’s arch-rival Hello! had successfully sent several paparazzi to gatecrash the reception and snatch pictures of the couple using cunningly concealed cameras.

During the six-week hearing (six weeks!), the court heard that one of the bootleg photographs subsequently published in Hello! featured Catherine Zeta Jones eating a slice of wedding cake and left her feeling “devastated, shocked and appalled”. In the end the court decided through the adjudication of Mr Justice Lindsay that “there was an intrusion into individuals’ private lives without consent... I do not hold the intrusion to have been justified.”

However, the judge specified that their legal victory was not based on the allegations of a breach of privacy and it was this specification that made the Hollywood couple’s victory a hollow one, as it means that put-upon celebrities who view newspapers and magazines as extensions of their PR wings, bless their fishnet stockings and Armani socks, do not have the legal right to hawk photos of themselves to the highest bidder and then turn around and claim their privacy has been invaded when the self-same highest bidder gets scooped by a rival.

Perhaps what was most incredible about this whole debacle was Catherine Zeta-Jones’s claims that she felt “violated” when Hello! published the unauthorised photographs which she claimed were “sleazy and unflattering”.

Like me, you are very possibly wondering what exactly Ms Zeta-Jones expected her wedding photographs to look like. She was, after all, marrying Michael Douglas, of whom it is probably fair to say that the camera lens hasn’t yet been invented that could capture the old lizard in a light that’s anything other than sleazy and unflattering. The man’s a 59-year-old self-confessed sexaholic who’s old enough to be her father, for fuck’s sake.

And let’s face it, it’s not as if Catherine Zeta-Jones has an unblemished rap-sheet in this field either. She does, after all, number John Leslie and Mick Hucknall among her ex-boyfriends, both of whom are self-confessed “ladies’ men” (i.e. vain egomaniacs). For proof, if proof were needed, that they are appalling fuckers, let’s examine the facts: one took a friend of mine out for dinner once before bringing her back to his house where he showed her videos of himself presenting Wheel Of Fortune. The other is Mick Hucknall.

Quite how any woman could throw her head back and voluntarily shriek with pleasure while bouncing vigorously up and down on the sweaty, hairy pot-bellies of either these two disgusting charlatans and then have the audacity to claim that a photograph of her eating a slice of cake left her feeling “violated” is beyond belief.

You could understand her displeasure if she’d been caught eating something else. One of the bridesmaids, for example.

Indeed, in the event of such a violation, I’d venture to say that my compassion for the poor lamb would have stretched to buying up every copy of that particular issue of Hello! I could get my hands on, if only to reduce the odds of Catherine or any of her nearest and dearest being caused embarrassment by such graphic lesbian images. I’m good like that.
And as for searching the guests as they make their way into a wedding – is this common practice? I have attended quite a few weddings in my time, but I have yet to suffer the indignity of a shake-down at the hands of the hired muscle on the way into the church. In the unlikely event that this ever happens at any wedding I attend in the near future, I think it’s probably safe to say I’ll re-evaluate my friendship with the bride and groom, stick my present under my arm and piss off home.

Although he’s not in the Catherine Zeta-Jones league, Johnny Vegas has achieved a considerable measure of celebrity since this column first made his acquaintance. After a hectic bidding war, the portly potter sold his wedding photos – cake and all – to Viz for the princely sum of £1. Sterling. Which just goes to show that Catherine Zeta-Jones and her ilk don’t have a monopoly on preciousness. Even the most level of heads can be turned by fame and its trappings.