Intrusion in the public interest is a wobbly defence - as Kate and I know to our cost

SHE doesn’t like net curtains. But she does like to let in a bit of morning sunshine, so she pulls back the curtains while I’m in the shower, and I often pad back into the bedroom, in various stages of self-revelation, and find myself exposed to ridicule from passing pedestrians (“Huh, look at that – she must have married him for his money …”) No, I’m not sure of the legal ramifications. Presumably they’re not invading my privacy. They couldn’t have known, when they set off on their morning constitutional or early shift, that they would be confronting a man in a towel – and only just in a towel. And how can I be guilty of indecent exposure, given that I had no idea, when I left the bathroom, that I was returning to an unguarded bungalow window? What if they didn’t just look, laugh, and move on, but whip out their fancy phones and take a couple of snaps for Facebook? How far away do they have to be before it becomes not intrusion but journalism in the public interest (the French public, anyway)? Would Silvio Berlusconi buy the pictures, as, predictably, his media empire has those of the Duchess of Cambridge? It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that the creepy little toad had been skulking in the bushes himself, leering over a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Honestly, sometimes you do begin to see what the Taliban has against Western ‘civilisation’. Is there any level on which straining a telephoto lens over an unsuspecting undressed person hundreds of yards away is not pervy and sick? Whatever happened to the concept of a Peeping Tom? (He went blind, if I remember right, which of course you wouldn’t wish on anybody, but …) Talking of blinds, that’s probably the answer in the bedroom, except that it would mean laying bare my DIY incompetence and inviting even more ridicule from the neighbours as I wobbled on the windowsill. Perhaps I – and the Duchess – should just invest in some bigger towels.