The human ear is carefully attuned to pick up and filter out certain sounds.

 Our mother’s
voice, for example, can be distinguished even in a great crowd of people, yet we have
evolved the ability to ignore the steady background drone of traffic in our cities.  There is one
sound, though, that, no matter how hard I try to blot it out of my senses, makes my gorge
rise and sends the bloodlust coursing through my veins.  It’s the sound of a celebrity whining
that they’ve had their privacy invaded.

Oh, they cry, it’s a terrible injustice that the paparazzi pursue us night and day, as if they
were slavering bloodhounds and we poor, defenseless, fluffy rabbits.  Oh their terrible teeth
and their terrible jaws, and awful cameras and flashguns.  How hard it is to be us, how
undeserving we are of this cruetly!

Sod off, I say. I enjoy watching them hunt you down like vermin.  I love the sight of a
celebrity running from photographers, balancing a Starbucks super-skinny-extra-poncy-
lattemaccachino in one hand and a colossal carrier bag containing fifteen hundred quid’s
worth of makeup in the other.  I love seeing your hair flying, your mascara smeared and the
heels of your Jimmy Choos broken and shattered.  Every smudge looks like another dream
gone down the pan.

And don’t come snivelling to me with your pathetic whimpers about how horrible the
photographers are.  The average British paparazzi is a balding, overweight, middle-aged
man whose filthy shirt barely conceals the rolls of fat around his belly.  Granted, you wouldn’t
want him spending too much time with your children, but he’s about as threatening as an
aged Labrador: it stinks but hasn’t any teeth.

But we don’t deserve it!  Aren’t we normal people, just like you, with kiddies and family
holidays, and takeaways and troubles just like anyone?  Give me a break.  You’re over-
made-up freaks, turned the colour of brick by decades of fake tan, your polished bodies
temples in which you offer worship only to yourselves, and prayers are sung by the priests of
twitter. You’re shallow, inarticulate morons, witless and gutless, latching onto the next
passing fad like leeches some fetid swamp of the Bolivian jungle.  Buy another child,
ma’am?  Stick another line up your nose, sir?

So don’t come whinging that you deserve privacy, because your decision to become a
celebrity (and believe me, no-one does it by accident, even that shambling lump of Scottish
idiocy who sings idiotic songs badly) has reduced you to being less than something I’d
scrape off the bottom of my shoe with a knife.  In Italy once, someone suggested a bonfire of
the vanities.  Tell you what, you’re first: all that Botox will burn just lovely.