Thanks, Kate’s breasts: you've shown it's not OK for us to leer

I'd feel violated by a weirdo with a camera if my nipples were across the pages of a rag.

(Getty Images)

I’ve never seen Kate Middleton’s boobs. Yes, I know I can ogle them on the internet if I wish, regardless of that quite surprising ruling by the civil court at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre yesterday.

But Kate’s tits are still there, online, completely against her will, to be leered at, laughed about or dismissed as somewhat lacking as a masturbation aid. I’ve heard all of these views so far. Kate, darling, your tits’ anonymity did not die in vain, it helped shine light upon a lot of very odd views about women.

But I, for one, will never look at them. Cackle and call me Pollyanna if you wish, but when I imagine a young woman crying her eyes out, possibly curled in the foetal position, which I’d be if my nipples were strewn across 22 pages of a French rag – feeling abased and violated by some self-serving weirdo with a long-lens camera – I don’t think, “Anyway, enough of that, let’s see what shade her areola is?”

Or when I imagine Kate’s husband, who watched his late mother harassed by the press until her dying breath, screaming at lawyers trying to prevent the photos’ resale, well, damn, it takes the titillation out of these tits for me. These people are human beings, having human emotions and I am human, too. I didn’t look at the sex tape of Tulisa from N-Dubz either – not that I’m sure Kate or Tulisa would thank me for linking them here – because Tulisa’s pain, embarrassment and betrayal over a sexual matter was evident and I don’t glean pleasure from that.

Increasingly, I think the Western world could benefit from rediscovering the simple pleasures of being gentlemanly – or gentlewomanly – chivalrous or decidedly old-fashioned. You know those moments in Downton when someone insults Lady Sybil and three men stand up holding soup spoons crying “Now then, that’s not on!”? That. I’ll take that human emotion over the defence of creepy weirdos with long-lens cameras any day. It’s odd we live in an era where basic empathy and manners are seen as either inflammatory, weak or simply “a bit wet”.

But I do feel empathy for Kate. Kate’s love of high-neckline, knee-length Issa frocks and neutral make-up matched with her perpetual silence have never suggested here’s a woman trading on her raw sex-appeal who’d accept tit pictures as “part of the job”. Although this takes me down a victim-blaming cul-de-sac I’m not comfy with either. Neither do I think it’s fair that by being upset about her partial nudity, this makes her an enemy of nudists and naturists.

“They’re only tits!” I’ve been told several times. OK, then go and look at some with the owner’s consent. And if you’re reading this becoming increasingly irate because you believe that the freedom to look at Kate’s tits on the internet is one of yer’ basic human rights, why, in fact NOT being allowed to look at snaps of the tits of women who don’t want to show you their tits means “at some level those Taliban geezers have won”, well, I weep for you and your tiny peanut brain. In fact, sometimes I weep for what the internet did to humanity – thankfully, all the LOLcat pics cheer me up immensely.

Similarly, if you’re one of the “Well, she shouldn’t have slipped her bikini top off by a private pool, several hundred metres from a road which was being guarded by the world’s most vigilant security if she didn’t want pictures to be posted on Twitter so men can discuss whether they’d toss or not toss off over them” brigade, well, off into the dunce corner for you with the pointy hat. Go and stand with Mr and Mrs “Well, I pay my taxes which pay for the Queen’s corgis’ food, so if you think about it I have a RIGHT to see those tits”. A long career as a daytime Sky News talking head for the Taxpayers’ Alliance awaits you. So, thank you, Kate’s boobs, Pinky and Perky or whatever you’re called in private moments because you are private things, for exposing a lot of misogynistic rot.

It’s led me in a quiet moment to hope my nemesis Gove’s education-wrecking ball goes much further, because the past 25 years of brain-taming the Nuts and Zoo! generation clots has failed most dreadfully.

The tide is turning against arrogant GPs

Complaints against GPs increased by 23 per cent to reach 8,781 last year, with men and older medics most likely to attract accusations, the General Medical Council has disclosed. Oh, dear, the tide is turning against doctors. The generations before us who brimmed with unthinking deference towards their GPs’ opinions and haphazard people skills are dropping like flies.

In its place are those from the sharp-elbowed graduate class who’ve thoroughly researched their symptoms pre-visit and are already furious it took eight working days to get a face-to-face as the officious idiot on reception only takes bookings between 9 and 10 on Wednesdays and can’t always access the system.

By the time many people reach their GP’s chair for their seven-minute pow-wow, they already know exactly which cheaper drug not to be fobbed off by. They’ve often settled for seeing a GP within the surgery previously, who didn’t know their case and who gave them wonky advice which contradicted their main GP so their med doses may be skew-whiff.

And having taken time off work to see their GP, they may be questioning why their GP only works office hours and isn’t there on Saturdays and Sundays when they get an answering machine and a vaguely worded mumble.

My own GP – I must add – is a living saint but I know this by harsh comparison with the 10 who went before her. I’d talk about them more but I’d need a double appointment.

Twitter doesn’t need to see my double chin

Twitter took to the Today show on NBC to announce massive news yesterday. The arrival of a spangly new home page with space for a massive personal avatar which will expose your patchy complexion, eye-bags and turkey wattle neck in full social network glory. Not that I have any of these things. Or I certainly won’t when I commission Rankin, a half-day hair and make-up session and someone with a wind machine to snap my casual “off the cuff” natural portrait.