CELEBRITY watching nowadays is a puzzle. If you wanted a definition, it would perhaps be taking excessive interest in what is not very interesting.

Much of today's media is occupied in shadowing every twist and turn of these celebrities or forking out fortunes to bribe those they once employed. It is surprising how nastily loquacious people become when a national newspaper's chequebook is waved under their eager noses.

David and Victoria Beckham, who are never far away from such attentions, recently went to court in an attempt to prevent their former nanny selling her story to the News of the World. Mr Justice Langley ruled in the newspaper's favour and so beans were duly and copiously spilled.

As the nanny, Abbie Gibson, had been hired in confidence, and had signed a confidentiality clause, her betrayal was nasty and vicious. At such times, newspapers like to stress their belief in the freedom of speech, which is all very well and marvellous - but why is this important freedom so often only flourished in order to print pages of dirt about celebrities?

It may sound odd coming from someone in my line of work, but I think the Beckhams deserve to keep more or less as much of their privacy as they like. But then that's because I am just not interested in them or their cash-cloistered lives.

Much as I am indifferent to Wayne Rooney and his girlfriend, Abi Titmuss, Charlotte Church, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Denise Van Outen, Kelly Brook, mouthy members of Oasis, former Spice Girls, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin - the whole pampered lot of them and countless others besides.

In a sense, I'm even upset that I know who these people are. Haven't I got anything better to clutter up my mind? But in an age when the minuscule has been elevated to the mountainous, it's hard to avoid these celebrities, whose private lives have become public property and a means to a lucrative end for those national newspapers, magazines and TV stations which earn a fat living off their suntanned backs.

Even those who don't profit from celebrities end up loftily commenting on those that do. And, yes, I'll plead guilty to that one.

Then again, maybe none of this matters and if we have to fill our lives with something, it may as well be acrimonious tittle-tattle about the famous, the sort of famous and those desperately seeking attention. Or is that just too depressing for words?

In reading a newspaper column about the death of privacy, I came across a phrase attributed to the York-born poet WH Auden, which went like this: the trouble is nowadays that people have forgotten the difference between their friends and strangers.

I couldn't find the exact reference, although Auden did once write: "You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people." So maybe that's where it comes from.

Anyway, how shocked craggy old Auden would be by today's England, in which secrets splash all over the place.

This notion about the forgotten difference between friends and strangers certainly rings true - all the way from cheap-sheen magazines filled with brainless gossip back to Prince Charles and his late wife going on TV to publicly debate the implosion of their marriage. And if the elevated classes are at it, why shouldn't everyone else join in?

The trouble is, we all need our privacy and celebrities, while having benefited from their fame and earned richly from it, are essentially no different. Everyone wants to be left alone sometimes. Is that so unreasonable?

I'VE kept away from today's elections, needing a rest from politics. But I couldn't resist this tale from the former Liberal leader Lord Steel, who this week recalled doing a walkabout in 1979 when he spotted a sweet old dear who looked ripe for his electoral attentions. He went up to her and said: "Hello, I'm here campaigning for the Liberal party," to which she replied: "Well, I'm here to buy a lettuce."

Somehow that speaks across the years to sum up the general feeling towards this election.

Updated: 09:21 Thursday, May 05, 2005