The issue of the right to privacy is an important one ("Blairs will do 'whatever it takes' to defend privacy", 6 March 2000), but just as important, and the source of this particular breach of privacy, is the question (yet to be made an issue!) of the presumed "right to sell a story" at all.

It is easy for the well-off to criticise the Blairs' former nanny for wanting to make some money from her reminiscences, but who can blame her for taking pecuniary advantage of her situation? Take a look around at all the people - many of them well-known and wealthy - who do exactly the same,  or something very similar: selling their name or fame to outside interests.

People who sell their bodies for immoral use are called prostitutes. I ask myself whether someone selling their story, their name or their fame to the media or advertisers is not also a kind of prostitute, "earning" a lot of very easy money for something that should not really be for sale at all.

As in the case of classical prostitutes, it is not only them society should hold in some degree of contempt (and subject to the law) but also those soliciting their immoral services.

Yours sincerely