It was fun on the BBC’s Today programme this morning to hear a stuttering, burbling, ill-informed Graham Dudman – managing editor of the Sun, attempting feebly to defend the right of the popular press to plaster private details of individuals’ lives all over the pages of their unpleasant little organ.

Like every Shag-Rag editor, Dudman agreed with Paul Dacre’s claim yesterday that Mr Justice Eady was introducing a privacy law “through the back door.”

He contended that if these papers didn’t give their readers the vicarious smut they craved that somehow the standards of our national press would decline. Any claim that papers like the Sun, or the Screws or the Mail uphold any kind of journalistic standards is laughable. Fortunately, in this country we do have a high-quality press which millions of British readers enjoy, in the Times, the Indie, the Telegraph and the Guardian, each with their own slant.

(These papers know perfectly well that the Public Interest defence will always protect them from prosecution in serious investigations, but they also like to be seen joining in the tabloid hue & cry over privacy law, even if they aren’t engaged in celeb-baiting themselves. However, it seems that they feel they must show solidarity with their disreputable comrades – God knows why.)

This morning, Graham Dudman was reluctant to concede that appeals against High Court judgements are possible, suggesting, as Paul Dacre had done, that Mr Justice Eady was the sole arbiter of law relating to privacy. If Parliament weren’t so windy about upsetting Murdoch and Dacre, they’d have dealt with the perceived anomalies over Privacy judgements several years ago.

Carry on Spouting…

Incredibly, Dudman repeated Dacre’s bizarre claim that if tabloids couldn’t carry on spouting lurid and often fictional accounts of celebrities’ personal habits, the death knell would sound over the Great British Press.

Give me the chance, and I’ll happily dance on the graves of the Screws and the Sun in my heaviest hob-nailed boots.