Frosty reception

When there is a celebrity in the dock, news editors, who wouldn't normally recognise a Manolo Blahnik if Jude Law sent it to them by mistake, become fashion editors. According to the Guardian, Catherine Zeta Jones took the witness stand on Monday, as part of her privacy claim against Hello! magazine, "wearing a black trouser suit, a diamond-encrusted pendant and diamond ear-rings". The Herald revealed that Michael Douglas was dressed "in a black single-breasted suit, light cream shirt, and purple tie". He was, added The Scotsman, "Sporting blond hair and a tan".

I'd like to see this attention to sartorial detail extended to everyday crime reporting: "Dougie McShuggie of 12 Marshall Street, Paisley, wore a purple shell-suit, three pairs of white Adidas socks and his best gutties as he pled not guilty to charges of aggrieved canine inflammation."

Actually, I don't know why I'm making light of this; the whole Hello! trial has me apoplectic with fury. For anyone who has missed the media circus, it boils down to this: OK! magazine paid Zeta Jones and Douglas (pounds) 1million for the rights to take pictures at their wedding. Hello! sneaked a snapper in to the reception, and ran the pictures in a spoiler issue, which appeared three days earlier than OK! Now both the actors and OK! are suing Hello! It's a massive bonfire of the vanities, a pyre fuelled by ego and exclamation marks.

I absolutely accept that on one level what Hello! did was wrong. If someone had shown up at my wedding and started photographing without permission, I'd have had something to say about it, and that's true whether they were taking the pictures to sell or just because they really fancied my Aunty Jean. But Zeta Jones and Douglas simply cannot deny that their wedding was a public event. Putting aside the question of what they were paid, by inviting a magazine to photograph their wedding they were effectively waiving their right to privacy.

Douglas claims that the unauthorised photographs were "voyeuristic". What does he mean? The dictionary definition of a voyeur is "a prying observer who gets excitement from witnessing other people's suffering or distress". Now, I know Douglas's buns have probably sagged a good bit since his Fatal Attraction days, but surely Zeta Jones couldn't have been that upset on her wedding day?

What Douglas is actually getting at, I think, is that he is entirely uneasy with the idea of himself as a public figure, that he doesn't like the notion of some damp-palmed pleb poring over pictures of him in his tux. But if that is the case then why agree to sell the pictures in the first place, especially knowing that they were going to be syndicated around the world? It just seems astonishing that he and his wife, who is heavily pregnant and probably shouldn't be enduring a flashbulb-tastic courtroom battle right now, would put themselves through this. In their minds, there is clearly some principle at stake - they are suing for only (pounds) 500,000, a pittance for them - but it is hard to see what the principle is.

In the end, whatever they tell themselves, this comes down to vanity and control. Zeta Jones says that the Hello! pictures made the wedding guests appear "doused in bad disco lighting", which should not be anything new for her husband (whose appearance in the clubbing scene in Basic Instinct scarred a generation) or to any members of her family who ever had a night out in Swansea.

Zeta Jones also claims that two photographs - one in which Douglas is spoon-feeding her, another in which she is dancing with a journalist, and which "makes me look large" - are harmful to her professionally. "The hard reality of the film industry is that preserving my image, particularly as a woman, is vital to my career," she said. Does she really have so little regard for her acting talent that she believes she will only be cast in films if she maintains the illusion that she never eats cake?

Entertaining as the trial is, and James Price, counsel for Hello! is turning out to be a brighter star than either of the actors, the whole thing is showbusiness at its worst. It's exactly like those legal actions where stars sue over suggestions that they are gay, claiming that this could harm their screen image. This kind of thing is an insult to their audience, an expression of their belief that regular people are unable to distinguish between the movies and real life.

In fact, it is the pampered likes of Zeta Jones and Douglas who have lost touch with reality. Used to getting their own way and bending the media to their will, they fall to pieces when, for once, control of their image spins out of their control.

Michael Douglas, it bears mentioning, is an official United Nations 'Messenger of Peace' whose brief is to focus worldwide attention on nuclear disarmament and human rights. Three years ago he visited the UK and spoke in Parliament on this very subject. How fortunate we all are that on this trip, as he wages war on the home front, there is nothing more pressing going on in the world that could demand his attention.

Email Peter at peter.ross@sundayherald.com

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