This scrutiny of the famous and the powerful is unpleasant but necessary

If Kate Middleton really objects to the press treatment she is getting, she should take a long, hard look at her future
    • The Guardian,
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It's the editor on the line. "Jenkins," he barks, "we're being out-harassed, out-intruded, out-hypocritised on the Kate Middleton story. The tabloids are mopping up. I need my best man on the job. Hightail it down to Chelsea."

"Hold on, chief," I reply. "This is no doddle. TopShop has sold out of monochrome co-ordinates. Every girl in town is medium height, with long brown hair, nice, expressionless face, black stockings, black shoes, black coat and VW Golf. I could shoot a thousand Middletons between Oxford Circus and Sydney Street. The place is full of them. Peter Jones could be the Thomas Crown museum."

"Jenkins," he says, "I want you down there. I am fed up paying paparazzi. Find the pack, get up close, hose the Doris. Scream a lot. Get reaction. Ask if he's popped the question. Dig the bin. Ask the neighbours what time she came home last night, and don't forget with whom. Remember, we do dignified harassment, quality intrusion... public-interest stuff. Tell her the Guardian longs to leave her to love in peace, and make sure the TV mics pick it up."

"Boss," I beg, "I got the Leica ready, the furry anorak, the stepladder and the Vespa. I'll go anywhere. But give me the Moss-and-Docherty job or the Hurley or the Paltrow. I'll even do the four-in-the-morning Oasis punch-and-vomit beat. But not Middleton. She's class camouflage. We're beat."

There are times when my profession surpasses itself. On Monday the admirable London Evening Standard splashed on Ruth Kelly as a "hypocrite" and on Tuesday led with Middleton's privacy plea, followed by three pages of stories and pictures. Meanwhile News International was forbidding its editors to buy or use shots of her visiting nightclubs, restaurants or generally "going about her daily business". They could use only Press Association pictures of Middleton at the races. What's going on? Has Wapping become the press office for the Jockey Club? It must be the first time the company has formally censored its editors on a matter normally within their discretion.

The photographers themselves are all innocence. One was reported as saying that he never intruded and "only photographed what was in front of me". It was like the policeman complaining that the bruised suspect had "interposed his face before my advancing fist". The top paparazzi agency, Big Pictures, said that it was not marketing intrusion but "news pictures". Middleton "wouldn't be interesting if she wasn't in the news". And vice versa.

That is the long and short of it. Being photographed outside your home on your birthday might not be Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, but it is not absolutely the worst thing that could happen to you. Having flashbulbs popping at your legs as you get out of Prince William's car at a well-known nightclub might take some gilt from the gingerbread but there's plenty of it left. There is something unreal about all this.

As for being asked every day if your boyfriend has proposed to you, that must indeed be annoying, but Middleton has had five years to learn that this is no ordinary boyfriend, nor is it an ordinary question. On it hangs the future headship of state. This relationship is monarchy's version of a general election, with the Chelsea stake-out as an early exit poll. Middleton is walking down a well-known path through an enchanted forest, but every such story has its bad fairy. Cue the press.

Fame comes table d'hôte not à la carte. While its reign is usually brief, it is tyrannical and its sufferers cannot pick and choose the plot. Two women were pursued by photographers this week, Middleton and Ruth Kelly. Middleton was good news and Kelly bad, though the difference can get lost in the scrum. Kelly must have expected trouble from the moment she inflicted her political ambition on her family. Besides, trial by media ordeal has long been a folk ritual of British politics. Uneasy lie all heads that wear crowns.

Middleton's case is more delicate, but only in degree. Everyone has some right to privacy, but it is calibrated to their fame and susceptible to little more than taste. British press self-regulation is hopeless, largely because those guarding it are most guilty of infringing it (editors on the Press Complaints Commission). As a result, celebrities have resorted to pushing out the boundaries of trespass, copyright and confidentiality law. As for harassment, if 20 policemen can protect Tony Blair's front door from anti-war protesters and others, surely a couple can be spared to keep photographers on the far side of Middleton's street. There is no such thing as compulsory fame, even for royal families. Many European monarchs live unobtrusive lives and do not involve their relations in public events. The rich and aristocratic are uniquely blessed with means of avoiding crowds. They can disappear to castles, islands and estates and associate only with others like themselves. They are not required to go to fashionable nightclubs, and if they do they can hardly complain about being pictured.

The process by which the media disseminates fame is messy. People are intruded upon who find it unpleasant. Having worked most of my life in the British press, I know its warts. I sympathise with their victims, but the ruthless scrutiny of those in power and enjoying celebrity is an activity I would generally defend. In many respects we need more of it.

Being pursued by packs of photographers when trying to be ordinary is intrusive and humiliating, but celebrities are not ordinary and there is no point in pretending otherwise. In Middleton's case, the coverage is not unfriendly: indeed it has been flattering to the point of sycophancy. To have reduced the scions of Wapping to pledges of self-denial is in itself an unprecedented coup. As Northcliffe said, the power of the press is great, but not as great as the power of suppress. But as long as the relationship with Prince William is unresolved, anyone who thinks Middleton can wander the streets of London unaccosted by paparazzi is not on this planet. Monarchy is not ordinary.

If Kate Middleton seriously objects to the scrutiny to which she is now subjected, she should take a long, hard look into the future. This is not an undergraduate romance. This is not love's wayward arrow. We are not pulling petals off daisies. Marrying this man would be a seismic lifestyle decision - and I am talking only about the media. Every step is a potential pitfall and every happiness vulnerable to press pollution.

If her romance fructifies, she will need for nothing. She will have cars and planes on call, money without limit, detectives to guard her, shops, clubs, stars and celebrities at her feet, and friends and invitations galore. There will be sugar and spice and all things nice. Millions of girls would die for it.

But there is no such thing as a free life. Middleton's existence will be one long, tedious climb to the distant peak of monarchy, with searchlights and lenses trained on her all the way. This week's pesterers outside her front door will have been barely a warm-up act. One day she may look back on them as kindly codgers giving her a small taste of her new job while humbly doing theirs.

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