It got Max Mosley's. And then it got the News Of The World's. And then it got mine.

Lost in the supermarket, I was, reading the story.

And I thought: Absolutely disgraceful.

What, I wondered, was a Sunday newspaper doing running such a weak splash?

Give us footballers cheating on pop-star wives before throwing up on teenage conquests. Give us supermodels selling sex for drugs.

But don't bore us with a rich old man – probably largely unheard of among the paper's readership – who gets his kicks being whipped. And spoken to in German.

And, come to think of it, if you're a newspaper editor definitely don't "expose" a millionaire barrister with powerful friends unless you're sure your chief reporter hasn't "fictionalised" parts of the story.

Mosley isn't the kind of man who takes things lying down. Not unless he's in a Chelsea dungeon, anyway.

So now he and his fellow party participants have put suits over stockings and are trooping through court in defence of the old boy's character and his right to privacy.

It was like playing cowboys and Indians, they say. They even brewed up after putting the nipple clamps away. Well, it's a thirsty hobby. I assume.

The case has certainly interested the media.

Sex sells, and everywhere the spotlight has been shone on the etiquette and legalities of BDSM activities. Not to mention the linguistic merits of German.

One BBC junior reporter even interviewed a dominatrix and toured her chamber as part of a hard-hitting investigation. That was probably about the same time I was interviewing people at Shelf gala.

What's really interesting about the case, so they say, is that the outcome will affect the rights of the press to report on the personal lives of public figures for years to come.

The question is: was Mosley – a man who does not earn a public wage and has never positioned himself as some kind of righteous moral figure – fair game to be exposed? Or did he have a right to privacy once he went in that door and descended those stairs? Amusing it may be but was it in the public interest to see a 68-year-old man caught with his pants down?

Tough one. Too tough for a mind like mine. Which is why a judge is deciding, I guess.

Although, surely it's kind of ironic that a newspaper which champions the public's rights to privacy against snooping councils should snoop into a man's privacy like that when it has no consequence on the private sector work he does.

"But if you were editor," a friend said, "would you have run the story?"

I didn't need to think.

Yeah I would – but I'd hope I had a footballer cheating on his wife for the front page.