How to tackle a career on the wane

Orlando Bloom, the city’s favourite son after Thomas Becket and former Canterbury Christ Church University vice-chancellor Robin Baker, made international headlines for less than salubrious reasons last week. The 39-year-old was snapped - or “papped” as we call it in the trade - by a member of Her Majesty’s paparazzi. He had his tackle out in a display of full frontal nudity while on holiday in Sardinia with his shop-soiled songstress squeeze Katy Perry, ex-wife of Russell Brand. One thought immediately sprang to mind: If I went down to the beach at Herne Bay and put on a similar performance, what sort of reaction might I be expected to receive? But then another rose in my mind - and a fair few other people’s minds, I daresay. One poster on our website Kentonline, for example, wrote: “When these starlets’ careers are on the wane, out come the naughty bits whether it’s a see-through dress or a photo-shopped OMG I didn’t realise anyone would take a photo. In the final throes of their careers, out come the family skeletons in the cupboard that decent people wouldn’t publicise.” The person who provided these thoughts just so happens to call himself “fullfrontalnudity”...

The Ministry of Justice is the latest arm of government to behave with bovine stupidity. Our news group’s flagship paper, the Maidstone-based Kent Messenger, published a brilliant scoop in which it revealed that there are 14 inmates currently on the run from Kent’s prisons. Except the MOJ decided that it would not reveal their identities for “data protection” reasons. In other words, the one thing most likely to lead to their apprehension - their identities being made public - is the one thing it is unwilling to do. This is not even surprising these days. We have a paranoid and neurotic state which refuses to trust its citizens with the information it holds and would rather deny them access to truths than expose them to reality.

PAPPED: Orlando Bloom