It's been one of those weeks when what's known as the "tabloid press" have done their worst and once again triggered a national debate over invasion of privacy.

How far should newspapers go to give their readers what they believe they want to know rather than what they need to know?

What public interest could be served by publishing of a photograph of Chris Tarrant clowning about in the back of a car with a bare-breasted Sophie Rhys-Jones - the bare breast apparently being the result of a rather ungallant tug by Tarrant at the bikini top of Prince Edward's bride-to-be.

It happened quite a few years ago, long before Sophie and Prince Edward became "an item". Does the public really "need to know" if the price is even more embarrassment for a Royal Family which has surely had enough of that sort of thing in recent years? Was it published to demonstrate that once again a prince had picked an unsuitable mate?

Or was the picture published to provide cheap thrills for those who might get a kick from gazing at a nipple which is soon to become a part of the Royal Family?

And what public interest was served by telling the world that comedian Lennie Henry had been seen with a blonde woman who clearly wasn't his wife, Dawn French?

The blonde in question says the pair only talked and there was no hanky panky - and she should know.

Henry is in the public eye, certainly. And I suppose that in a way he's a public figure because of his sterling work to raise money for the Third World through Red Nose Day. But does that mean that the public need, and have every right, to be told about his private life?

It doesn't affect the public part of his life. If the allegation had been, instead, that he was profiting personally from Red Nose fund-raising, that would have been a different matter.

But it isn't. There is nothing in what he is reported to have done that in any way weakens his right to be respected as a superb fund-raiser who has worked hard to make the world a better place. He and Dawn French deserve to be left alone.

And then, of course, there is Lawrence Dallaglio, whose tangle with a couple of journalists from the News of the World this week cost him his England Rugby captaincy and put his career in jeopardy.

I have no more idea than you or anyone else whether or not he took drugs or dealt in them, as he allegedly told the undercover reporters.

What I do know, though, is that he has admitted that he lied to two strangers about an involvement in the drugs scene and about taking part in a four-day sex orgy. He says he was "nave and foolish", which is undoubtedly true.

And maybe someone so nave and foolish and plain bloody stupid isn't a suitable person to be in such a responsible, role-model position, and deserves to be exposed as an impressionable buffoon.

But the exposure he received has linked the name of yet another celebrity with drugs. Every time that happens, it makes the idea of drugs more acceptable to easily-impressed youngsters.

That's the reason why Imran Khan, Pakistan's former cricket captain, said this week that he thinks newspapers should steer clear of stories like these unless any serious law-breaking is involved.

It's a rather different point of view and one I tend to agree with. But it will need a tabloid newspaper culture a long way from the one we have at present for it to ever be taken seriously.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.