You'd learn a lot by rummaging through my bins

A few years ago, I opened my front door to find a man busily sorting through the pile of black plastic bags stacked next to it. "What do you think you're doing?" I snapped imperiously. "What does it look like?" he countered. "I'm going through your rubbish." Miffed, I slunk indoors and hid behind a curtain watching him

peruse my Harvey Nichols account, pocket a discarded letter from a nutty fan, and carefully sort through the remains of a drunken dinner party. There was nothing I could do, short of taking my stinking garbage back inside. But I learnt an important episode that day, which is how to define privacy. Once bin bags are out on the street, what's inside them is public, be it knickers you can't get over your fat backside any longer or snotty notes to the cleaning lady. But, as I have remarked before, something weird happens to the brains of people who have spent a large part of their lives in the public arena. They have a special definition of privacy. And it's one that they redraw constantly according to their bank balances, or career opportunities.

Take the fascinating case last week of the Hollywood stars Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas going to court to bleat about their "private" wedding, suing Hello! magazine for £500,000 damages for printing "unauthorised" pictures of the event. Since The Darling Buds of May, Ms Zeta Jones has had an extremely successful career in films such as Chicago and Traffic, which require her to give endless promotional interviews. I'm glad that she has found happiness with an older man, and that he seems to have mysteriously lost about 15 years' worth of wrinkles in order to appear more appropriately aged next to his glamorous wife. She has, in return, adopted a mid-Atlantic twang, and they both enjoy golf, which must be a good thing.

Meeting Diandra, the previous Mrs Douglas, many years ago, I found her highly intelligent (she worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York) and very attractive. But maybe she couldn't handle a putting iron or didn't have a lot of friendly Welsh relatives. Anyway, Diandra has been replaced, as is so often the case these days, by a younger model. And Michael and Catherine were determined that their wedding in November 2000 should be "private". In this instance they defined private as something purchased for the sum of £1m. The payment would ensure the ceremony could only be enjoyed by them, their friends and relatives, and the readers of OK! magazine.

By the way, at this "private" event at the Plaza Hotel in New York were 350 guests whose identity had been revealed in advance, and the couple had already announced their wedding plans to the press in 21 countries. To ensure no one took pictures free, guests were asked to hand over anything that resembled a camera. But as the judge pointed out on Wednesday, a wedding is by its nature a public event, at which people are asked if they know any reason why the marriage should not go ahead.

As it happens, I went to a wedding the other day, in which a similar deal had been struck, that of my friend Vic Reeves, in Kent. Vic had wisely avoided a Zeta Jones-style situation by selling the rights to cover his wedding to both OK! and Hello! The results were plastered all over the gossip magazines last week, and there I was with a shiny face after a couple of glasses of champagne.

If famous people wish to cash in on their weddings, then it is their choice. I did not have to go to Vic's wedding, so I can't complain about the coverage. But Catherine and Michael had also signed a deal that allowed them to choose which pictures appeared in OK!, which guests would be edited out, and which images should be retouched to portray them in as flattering a light as possible. The enterprise starts to sounds less than an exchange of sacred vows and more like a marketing exercise. Subsequently our bridal couple were furious when unauthorised pictures taken secretly appeared in Hello!.

To my mind, Mr and Mrs Douglas are confusing the right to privacy with the right to control how the public, the fans who pay money to watch your movies and read about you in the press, see you. This court case is all about media manipulation, the maintenance of a manicured image, the air-brushing away of any unpleasant bits of reality. And as Michael and Catherine have surrounded themselves with an army of security guards, public-relations operatives and agents, their grip on the real world has loosened. If you want privacy, don't get married in a hotel with a celebrity guest list. If you want privacy, don't haggle with one magazine and exclude others.

If you're Michael Jackson, you don't spend eight months being trailed by Martin Bashir and a camera crew and then start moaning about trust being "violated". Wacko has about the same take on privacy as Catherine ZJ and Michael D. In order to prop up a flagging career, with a reputation besmirched by allegations of child abuse, he chose to allow a journalist to film him and his children at close range.

It is obvious from the result that the poor man is still a sexually naive virgin whose treatment of his own kids is a cause for concern. But as long as they are educated and healthy, there's not a lot we can do about it. The sight of Uri Geller appearing on the news to complain that Michael had somehow been portrayed unfairly is ludicrous. This is a man who took his children to a zoo in front of the world's press, wearing scarves and masks over their heads, and paraded them for pictures in a clearly distressed state.

Once you start to bargain with the press, and collude with journalists in order to enhance your status, you have lost your right to privacy. Later, of course you feel deep hurt and distress when they don't jump through the hoops you wave and provide propaganda according to your master plan. No matter how much Prince Charles paid Mark Bolland to engineer favourable coverage, it took one sneering piece by Ingrid Seward about the five valets and a special man to squeeze toothpaste to undo all the airbrushing of the previous months. Courtney Love could probably teach Mr and Mrs Douglas, Michael Jackson and Prince Charles a lesson or two in how to handle the issue of privacy – let it all hang out. You'll sell more records, more cinema tickets, more newspapers, and the public will warm to your little foibles, be they receding hair, fat ankles or unorthodox bedtime arrangements.

Tory Horror Show

Thank goodness Giles Brandreth is no longer a Tory MP. His party may be in trouble, but if his new musical, Zipp!, folds he had better forget about returning to the political arena. He might be an excellent diarist (and an even bigger name-dropper than me), but he has put together an excruciating compilation of 100 musicals in 90 minutes. It's no more than a village panto, with jokes so feeble even Iain Duncan Smith would consign them to the bin. Zipp! seems strangely out of date, an entertainment reminiscent of the 1950s.

An attempt to satirise the entire output of Andrew Lloyd Webber falls flat and current musicals such as Mamma Mia!, Taboo and We Will Rock You are virtually absent. I'd rather see Boris Johnson reading from the Book of Common Prayer than endure a nanosecond of Giles trying to emulate Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Show. If this is top Tory talent, I await the début of Theresa May and Ann Widdecombe in Cinderella next Christmas. The cast appearing with Mr Brandreth are all able performers – the trouble is their leading man is totally lacklustre and not up to the job. But isn't that just the Tory curse at present?