SOMEWHERE in Japan is a photograph of me clutching a pair of purple underpants. Exactly where is impossible to pinpoint, although I imagine it is not proudly displayed on a Tokyo mantelpiece. Most likely the portrait lies undisturbed at the bottom of a box in a rarely-used cupboard, consigned there a few moments after its owner uttered the Japanese for "who in God's name is that lanky beggar with the trolleys?"

To reassure you: the undergarments concerned were my own, and neither I nor anyone else was wearing them at the time.

Until moments before the photograph was taken, they nestled in a black bin liner of assorted laundry that I was attempting to transfer from my car to my new flat. Unwisely I had invested in the cheapest bin bags available. The inevitable happened: it split, disgorging various grubby items onto the road that should have remained a secret between me and the service wash woman at the laundrette.

As I scurried to retrieve my smalls, the whirr of a dozen camera motor drives signalled that the whole unhappy episode was being captured on film.

I should explain that the flat I was moving into was in the Georgian city of Bath, on the route of those open top tourist buses that always prove so popular with residents. One such had just pulled up behind me, filled with visitors from Japan.

Whether they thought I was a minor member of the royal family, an eccentric street entertainer or just an amusing idiot, I don't know. But they all pinged off about half a dozen pictures of my frantic pants pursuit.

Some time later, somewhere in Japan, a family will have settled back to peruse perhaps 250 photographs of their trip to Britain. Among them would have been a shot of some crimson-faced fellow waving his briefs above his head. Seconds later it was on the reject pile, destined never to be a part of the slideshow for friends and neighbours.

You have borne with me this far, and therefore deserve to know whether such a tawdry disclosure has a point. Indeed it has.

This recollection set me thinking. Having lived in both Bath and York, two cities ceaselessly photographed by tourists, I must have appeared unwittingly in the background of hundreds of pictures and videos that now reside all over the world.

That slightly unsettling thought is a small price to pay for freedom; thankfully, there is no law against being photographed in public.

Yet the way the Prime Minister reacted to seeing pictures of him with baby Leo at his christening suggests that our Tony might be mentally drafting such a law right now. He is so furious at this supposed "breach of privacy" that he initially refused to pose for press photographers as he began his Italian holiday.

Mr Blair is lucky. He was pictured proudly holding his baby, not grappling with his grundies. Publishing the photo-graph was technically a breach of the press code but hardly a sulking matter.

After the restrained, sympathetic reporting of Euan Blair's cherryade overdose you might have thought he owed us hacks one. Not this PM, however; only officially-approved images are allowed. Now every newspaper is waiting for revenge, the moment when they catch him on film with his pants down. Or waving them in the air.

I MUST add my support to those who have already paid tribute to the work of city archivist Rita Freedman. During my research for various articles on local history, I have spent many hours in the happy atmosphere of the archives.

She was always ready to help and her expertise was indispensable. With her team of knowledgeable staff and volunteers, the archives were more than accessible; they were a pleasure to visit.

The sooner she is back at work, the better for York.