Every dawn Paul Convery walks prohibited of his front door to be confronted by piles of discarded coffee tree cups and sandwich wrappings. There is an unmistakable stench of urine. The pavements are filled with stocky, daunting men with glowering expressions and the parking spaces have all been taken by battered 4x4s that have non paid or displayed.
'The neighbours down the road are woken nightly at roughly 3am by the sounds of taxi doors slamming, shuffling of feet, shouting and excitement,' he says. But this is no unexplained urban menace: this is the modern paparazzi at work. Convery has the misfortune to live on the same north London street as Peaches Geldof, the ubiquitous celebrity poppet valve whose characterisation is practically in exact from rag newspapers and glossy magazines.
'We have had up to a dozen paparazzi hanging out for 12 to 18 hours at a stretch, eating, drinking, urinating on the street, having barbecues,' says Convery, a local Labour councillor who was recently affected to write a letter to Geldof suggesting she 'slope off for a few weeks' to give residents a holiday. 'These guys are like professional wrestlers wHO have picked up a camera. They have access to a range of expletives that they enjoyment with comfort. They ar very fast-growing and remind me of the hard men you would try to annul at a bar. These are people who have had the empathy sucked out of their life systems.'
This summer the British paparazzi have gone into overdrive. First, Geldof was alleged to have collapsed at home in July from a rumoured drugs overdose - which she denies - causing a spike of interest and a blizzard of rag photographs. That was further exacerbated last week by her marriage in Las Vegas, aged 19, to an unknown American rocker: cue front-page pictures of Geldof sporting an outsized wedding hoop, looking shamefaced. Then there have been the invariant snatched images of Amy Winehouse shuttling to and from rehab and the blurry shots of Sienna Miller engrossed around a new boyfriend.
The pursuit has been relentless. Miller, world Health Organization has been dating the married actor Balthazar Getty, broke down pat in tears at a Los Angeles garage on Monday when photographers swarmed round her car and asked questions about her alleged 'home-wrecking'. She by and by complained to police and was granted an accompaniment back to her Beverly Hills hotel.
Last week the actress Keira Knightley complained that paparazzi intrusion was 'a identical predatory force'. 'When you are leaving your front door and paparazzi, world Health Organization are a lot bigger than you, are yelling "You're a whore" to try to make you cry - that manifestly is not great,' she aforesaid in an interview with Tatler magazine. 'If you look at the biggest film stars, they do not get paparazzi'ed that much, partially because they've already had it so much that they precisely close themselves off in their houses and don't leave them.'
After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car go after in 1997, there was a corporate pause for breath by newspaper and magazine editors who sworn not to use snatched images. But now, 11 years later, the fragile boundary betwixt feeding the public interest and maintaining an individual's right to privacy appears to have been breached by a new breed of irregular paparazzi.
The marketplace has taken a disquieting turn. Our ghoulish captivation with images depicting stars in various states of disintegration has ensured that these pictures often carry a higher monetary value. Just call up of Winehouse, chalk-faced and bleary-eyed, visualized wandering the streets in her underclothes last December. Or Britney Spears, wHO was photographed strapped to a hospital stretcher in January later tearfully refusing to hand over custody of her children. Both images would have sold for thousands of pounds.
'I don't cognize a single agency photographer who would shout that kind of insult [to Keira Knightley], and the agency wouldn't employ them if they did,' says peerless showbiz photographer who declined to be named. 'The problem is you're getting more and more free-lance guys world Health Organization think they can make a speedy buck simply by purchasing a camera and pitching up on a doorsill. They lavatory be quite aggressive and focused. They're like hunters following prey, because the game has got often more free-enterprise and that encourages a kind of survival of the fittest.'
Almost anyone can be a paparazzo straight off - all that is required is a digital camera, precipitous eyes and a satnav that tin can direct you to Sadie Frost's business firm in Primrose Hill. Bystanders can take snaps of celebrities on their fluid phones and sell them to gossip websites inside minutes. Heat magazine solitary receives 10,000 to 20,000 electronic images every day from readers.
Why do we find paparazzi images so fascinating? 'I think it's because it's easily digestible entertainment,' says Perez Hilton, the influential American celebrity blogger. 'It's play escapism.' A life-sized picture of the well-nigh bankable celebrities - Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Knightley or Miller - toilet fetch �200. But the value of the stab depends on the floor behind it: an sole set of Winehouse leaving a rehab clinic, for instance, arse be worth up to �30,000.
'Female celebrities always sell better than men because the magazine readership is overwhelmingly female,' says Alex Stanger, an amusement reporter for BBC News 24. 'Women want to see other women non looking so great. A shot of someone's axilla hair or cellulite sells more than a lovely, set-up, airbrushed photo.'
The more and more fevered rival means that a dedicated paparazzo must stick like glue to his quarry. This has led to a heave in the number of car chases - or 'follows', in paparazzi-speak. Not for null has the new generation of showbiz photographers become known as 'the stalkerazzi'. John Mayer, the singer-songwriter ex-boyfriend of Jennifer Aniston, complained sooner this calendar month that photographers were routinely breaking the speed limitation and shooting red lights.
In fashionable areas, the jest goes that you ar never more than sestet feet away from a paparazzo. In Los Angeles the city council is considering a so-called 'Britney law' that would seek to license paparazzi and introduce regulative measures such as making them have got a fluorescent 'P' on their telephone number plates. Elsewhere, a group of Malibu locals attacked paparazzi world Health Organization were trying to take shots of the role player Matthew McConaughey surfing.
'Celebrities ar constantly being hounded now because the market is so saturated,' says Stanger. 'I interviewed George Clooney latterly and he said to me that he has to be so much more aware than he was five years ago because now he goes to a restaurant and he won't know whether the nice couple following to him will originate filming him on their camera phones. That substance it is getting a bit more vicious.
'But it's a bipartisan street: celebrities need paparazzi as very much as the paparazzi need them, and some of them testament have a relationship with certain photographers. Victoria Beckham was e'er rumoured to have a guy she would call up to say: "I'm going to the gasolene station at this time, take a photo of me then."
'It's a unearthly, double-edged relationship. Amy Winehouse makes teatime for her paparazzi and Britney Spears ended up going kayoed with peerless [Adnan Ghalib], so it's almost like they're the only friends they receive left. It's quite incestuous.'
Admittedly certain celebrities at the lower end of the fame spectrum rely on paparazzi shots to raise their profile. Others, like Kylie Minogue, agree to stop and smile on the proviso that they are then left unequalled. If the famous do not seek attention, so the parameter goes, it is easy to avoid.
'If they don't like it, they tail end just locomote,' says Perez Hilton. 'Julia Roberts moved to New Mexico. Sandra Bullock moved to Texas. There's nothing worse than celebrities who complain or cover their faces pictures. So long as the paparazzi aren't breakage the police, celebs barely need to put up with it.'
Certainly it would be unjust to assume that the paparazzi are operating in a emptiness. They are simply eating the demand, both from the public and from the celebrities themselves. There is, also, a sealed code of honour among agency photographers, who respond with revulsion if you label them with the 'p'-word.
'I would say very strongly that our organization would non condone anyone making a celebrity blazon out,' says Alan Williams, chief executive of Big Pictures. 'I'm not expression those photographers don't exist, just that they're not employed by our agency.'
That offers scant comfort for celebrities wHO feel hounded. Nor does it give much relief to the likes of the unfortunate Paul Convery, who is not a celebrity and has never sought to be. As he continues to struggle his way of life through the disposable barbecues, one tin can only leslie Townes Hope that Peaches doesn't do anything to a fault newsworthy in the weeks to issue forth. Perhaps, as Perez Hilton suggests, she should locomote to New Mexico. Then, at least, the residents of his street would get their parking spaces back.
What it's like for the neighbours
Living virtually succeeding door to Amy Winehouse is no easy ride. It's non so lots the antics of Amy herself that keep her neighbours up at nighttime, but rather those of the small army of hangers-on and paparazzi milling around at all hours.
Though she is scarcely ever around, Amy-watching is a 24-hour-a-day industry, with the end of the road constantly blocked with cars and scooters, patch taxis and deliveries arrive at all hours, causation the street to be lit up with flashes.
Bored with hanging around all day and night, 3am games of football among paparazzi exploitation parked cars as goalposts are non uncommon.
That said, there are some notable advantages to having a celebrity neighbour. House prices aside, the presence of a dozen photographers and a pair of burly security guards keeping a 24-hour vigil helps make the street unrivalled of the safest and most crime-free in the whole of north London.
Even if it is mostly through a beleaguering mentality, her presence encourages conversation between neighbours and even promotes a small sense of community non seen in many places in the city.
Plus, being one step ahead of the gossip columns definitely impresses friends and colleagues, with most being at least a slight curious or even jealous.
David Hewitt
More info
