The really disturbing issue of Deayton's sex life

The best way to protect yourself against your private life being in the papers is to walk around with your flies undone and a copy of 'Filth Monthly' under your arm

Mr Justice Ouseley leads an interesting life. For some reason all the legal issues about the sex lives of celebrities and their rights to privacy end up being debated in front of him. Take last Saturday afternoon. For three hours, rather than play golf or go to Safeways, his lordship listened to lawyers for The Mail on Sunday argue why they should be permitted to publish yet another story on the private life of television presenter Angus Deayton in the next day's newspaper – and to Mr Deayton's lawyers on why they should not. A 2,000 word dossier (ie a document rather less than twice the length of this article) was apparently produced by The Mail on Sunday's QC, Mr Alastair Wilson, who argued that the new disclosures were "of vital concern to the public".

Let us store up this phrase for a moment, and press on. Deayton's lawyers argued that whatever it was that The Mail on Sunday had on their client, it should – for the time being at least – remain confidential. Having heard the pleas and read the uncompendious dossier, Mr Justice Ouseley agreed and granted Deayton an injunction. The Mail on Sunday had somehow to make do without its galaxy-exploding exclusive, but the case will be heard in court later this week and, without knowing the details, history favours The Mail on Sunday being freed to shock us all with more Deaytonia in the near future.

Right. Back to the pretext, and the "vital concern to the public" that is supposed to be associated with Mr Deayton's sex life. It is hard to imagine, offhand, what can be so worrying about anyone's sex life. Sure, if Prince Charles were sleeping with a member of al-Qai'da, and smuggling them into the Palace at night, then I guess someone should be told. Lilliputians living in the immediate vicinity of a randy Gulliver might be said to be vitally concerned by the giant's sexual interests and activities – in the same way that Neapolitans are by Vesuvius. But Deayton? Surely he can't emit a killer nerve agent when aroused by women other than his long-term partner?

Unlikely. So doesn't this suggest just another grubby bit of media hounding, with Deayton currently declared fair game, and every bone in every tiny cranny of his past being shaken out and held aloft for us to tut-tut over? Ooooooh no, promises The Mail on Sunday. These details (says "a spokesman") will "disturb even his closest friend. This case raises very important issues of public interest. We shall be seeking a full hearing to overturn the injunction and enable us to protect women from this man".

This is very kind of The Mail on Sunday . Up and down the country, playing patience while the summer breeze catches the net curtains and, outside in the garden, Tibbles pees on the fishing gnome, are millions of Mail-reading women who need to be protected from Angus Deayton. There are things about him that they have to know before they throw themselves, quivering, on his smooth bosom and ask for love. Or before he comes a-knockin' at their cottage doors, that vulpine smile on his wicked, foxy face. And if a judge doesn't do the right thing and permit publication, these women may ignorantly succumb, and the damage be done.

The recent case that may give hope to The Mail on Sunday and – if they are right – warning to the womenfolk of Britain, was also heard before Mr Justice Ouseley. Just before Christmas, the Top of the Pops presenter, Jamie Theakston, was photographed tasting the painful delights of an S&M brothel (they probably had one of those of cameras that they have at funfairs that snap you at the climactic moment on the roller-coaster). In late January his lordship banned publication of the photos, but permitted publication of the story and the testimony of the brothelettes. Just because a customer and a prostitute engaged in sex did not mean they were bound by laws of confidentiality, he ruled, rejecting Theakston's claim that he was protected by implied confidentiality. The judge said: "It is not inherent in the nature of a brothel that all or anything that transpires within it is confidential." No indeed.

Then Mr Justice Ouseley turned to the newspaper's argument that publication was in the public interest because Theakston was a role model. Here the judge ruled that Theakston would be viewed as "somebody whose lifestyle, publicised as it is, is one which does not attract moral opprobrium or would at least be generally harmless if followed". In other words, viewers' attitudes towards Theakston might be affected if they knew he had visited a brothel. Indeed, that was exactly what Theakston's lawyers had argued, when claiming that the story would adversely affect his career. So the story should be published. By implication, if Theakston had been the kind of person who everybody assumed attended brothels, and no one much minded, then the story would not have been in the public interest. Got that? So the best way to protect yourself against your private life being in the papers is to walk around with a fag hanging from your top lip, your flies undone and a copy of Filth Monthly under your arm.

But Deayton's was not Mr Justice Ouseley's only case this week. Another chap was also seeking to stop publication of an aspect of his activities, only this time it was on television. On Monday, a Mr A made an emergency application to stop a BBC programme, due to be transmitted tomorrow evening, from identifying him on screen.

The programme was the second part of BBC2's series, The Hunt for Britain's Paedophiles. Mr A, who had been convicted after pleading guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography, wanted his identity disguised. His counsel argued that "there is a real risk of physical attack if his name and image are shown [together] with adverse [police] comment about the leniency of his sentence". There was also the issue of how identification might damage the rehabilitation programme being undertaken by the man, who is under a three-year order with a condition of treatment. Mr Justice Ouseley rejected the application. He agreed there was a "degree of risk to anyone who is identified as a paedophile", but said he was "not satisfied that the combination of name, filming and commentary will establish that risk".

There are plenty of other people who will argue about the balance between free speech and privacy, and the role of the law in getting that balance right. And all of them ought to talk to Mr Justice Ouseley who must, by now, be the nation's expert. At another time I might even take part in that discussion myself. But just for now I want to do something less ambitious and contrast the cases of Angus Deayton and Mr A.

Anyone who saw the first part of Bob Long's exceptional series on catching paedophiles will know just how powerful and illuminating it was. The Hunt for Britain's Paedophiles is extraordinary, painstaking television journalism of a sort that I have sometimes feared has gone out of fashion. It reminds its audience, through images and interviews, of what paedophiles really do and how they really operate. It could even, I suppose, help to protect some children from these amazingly predatory men.

Worth bothering the judge for, I'd say. Not like that hypocritical, prurient garbage that passes for journalism over at The Mail On Sunday. From whom God protect us all.

David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com