SARAH VINE: What those naked pics truly expose is vanity

Kelly Brook must be delighted at the iCloud hacking ordeal since she's got an autobiography to flog

At first glance, it looked like a desperate publicity stunt by the makers of the summer’s non-blockbuster movie, Sex Tape, which opens in the UK this week.

For those readers unfamiliar with the plot, it’s about a married couple (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) who, ten years and two children in, decide to jump-start their love life by filming themselves taking part in a variety of bedroom gymnastics.

The husband accidentally uploads the resulting video to the Cloud, whereupon it goes viral.

A fantastical and absurd premise, you might think. After all, what kind of half-wit would store such highly personal material on what is, essentially, a giant public computer server?

Turns out, half of Hollywood. In a peculiarly timely example of life imitating art, scores of female celebrities — from Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence to reality TV phenomenon Kim Kardashian — had their iCloud (Apple’s data-storage service) accounts hacked.

Within hours, the internet was supposedly awash with naked selfies of Lawrence, Die Hard starlet Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay and model Kate Upton, with the promise of more to come from the likes of Rihanna, Cat Deeley, Cara Delevingne and Kelly Brook.

It is, of course, a shocking invasion of privacy. Everyone has a right to a private life.

Even if their career is based largely around showing off their bottom (Kardashian), turning up at film premieres half-naked (Brook, who in any case is probably delighted, since she’s got an autobiography to flog) or posting knickerless pictures online (Rihanna).

For them and those like them one feels, I confess, just a touch of schadenfreude. We’ve seen acres of their naked flesh already. Surely the only difference here is that, for once, they’re not getting paid?

For more serious talents such as Lawrence and Findlay, it seems genuinely bad luck. In either case, however, the question remains: why take naked selfies in the first place? I don’t have any lurking in my iCloud waiting to be hacked — and I’m sure you don’t either.

Perhaps it is an age thing. For my fortysomething generation, people who took photographs of themselves in the altogether were known as Reader’s Wives and they were located in the back pages of dirty magazines.

They weren’t ‘cool’ or ‘hot’ or whatever it is these days that one is supposed to be when one is deemed attractive to the opposite sex. They were just a bit sad.

Also, photography required effort. Not like it is now, a casual throw-away gesture, the flick of a thumb.

OK, we didn’t quite line up in our Sunday best and stand still for half an hour like the Victorians, but most cameras required a modicum of skill and thought.



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For more serious talents such as Lawrence and Findlay, it seems genuinely bad luck. In either case, however, the question remains: why take naked selfies in the first place?

You had to load the film, focus the lens, press the shutter. Then there was all the hassle of getting it developed (that in itself was a deterrent for saucy pictures, unless one had a particular penchant for the spotty teenager in the dark room).

But generally the only frisson came from waiting to find out how bad you looked when the packet came back from the processor.

If you’re Lawrence’s age — 24 — however, the smartphone is an extension of you. Narcissus had his pool to gaze into; today’s young things have their photo-streams.

Remember, it was Nemesis who showed Narcissus his image, causing the Greek warrior to fall so much in love with himself he eventually expired.

This whole sorry episode feels like the modern equivalent: beautiful celebrities obsessed with their appearance humiliated by their own vanity.

No one is arguing that having your private life all over the internet is anything other than horrid and traumatic. But the simple, hard truth is this: if you don’t want your breasts going viral, it’s probably best not to take pictures of them and keep them on your phone.



Time for a rethink on the abortion limit

I am, and always will be, a firm supporter of a woman’s right to choose. But however important the principle, one cannot be blind to the facts.

And the fact is that, according to new figures revealed at the weekend, a baby born prematurely at 23 weeks in Britain has a very good chance of surviving without significant complications.



Such is the skill of modern medicine that what would have once been virtually impossible is now almost routine.

According to new figures revealed at the weekend, a baby born prematurely at 23 weeks in Britain has a very good chance of surviving without significant complications

And if surviving a birth at 23 weeks is no longer a minor miracle, then it’s time we faced the truth: the abortion limit of 24 weeks (established in 1990) is too high.



Before everyone starts shouting, I should insert a caveat. What I mean is that the abortion limit of 24 weeks for a healthy foetus is too high.

As to those with serious abnormalities or when a threat is posed to the mother’s health, that’s a matter for the experts.

But if a woman is seeking a termination for what is essentially a lifestyle choice (I have too many already, I can’t afford it, I want to focus on my career, the b****** left me), then the time has come to accept that 24 weeks looks less like a medical termination and more like reckless cruelty.



The fact is that it’s increasingly hard to have a baby by ‘mistake’ in this day and age.

The morning-after pill is readily available, plus the shelves in Boots and those of online suppliers are packed with easy-to-use pregnancy tests, many of which can detect a foetus that is just days old.



There is really no excuse, then, for wanting to get rid of a healthy baby at 24 weeks, other than hopeless dithering.

Katie’s a big fat bully



TV personality Katie Hopkins has gained four stone in a bid to show the rest of us (even in her ‘fat’ incarnation she still weighs a good deal less than me) how stupid and lazy we all are for failing to be thin.

‘I hate fat people for making me do this,’ she snivels in a clip from her forthcoming show.



Really, Katie, are we ‘making’ you do this? Or are you simply ‘making’ money out of being horrible to countless women who would love to lose weight, but just can’t?

Her TV project - called To Fat And Back - will see her try to lose the weight again, in a bid to prove it is easy for those who are overweight to diet

The joystick Jihadists

Desperate to make some kind of sense of the madness of ISIS, I’ve been glued to an online news channel called Vice News, which has had a reporter embedded with the Jihadists.

His mini-documentaries give a terrifying insight into the mentality of these young men with big guns and crazed ideals.

They seem to think it’s all some huge game. In one bit, they’re filmed doing wheelies in a stolen tank. In another, they laugh and joke about what they’d rather be, a fighter or a suicide bomber.

Then it dawned on me: this is a generation that grew up on ultra-violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Soldier Of Fortune.

Many of these young men spent their teenage years locked in their bedrooms, eviscerating their rivals with chainsaws and torching prostitutes.

Of course, not every- one who plays violent video games turns into a murdering Jihadi.

But it might go some way to explaining how a bunch of second-rate British hoodlums can rejoice in seeing men’s heads hacked off in cold blood.

It’s war on tea and toast

At first glance, the Brussels ban on vacuum cleaners over 1,600 watts may seem more petty than malicious.

But look closer and you’ll see a sinister agenda at work. Alongside vacuums, they’re targeting lawn-mowers, power tools, kettles, toasters and patio heaters.

So carpets, lawns, DIY, tea, toast and dining outside in summer, regardless of the freezing cold. It’s nothing less than an all-out assault on the British way of life.





It takes a brave, brave woman to let her children design her wedding dress, as Angelina Jolie did.



Thanks to Versace, she just about got away with it. Luckily for me, mine weren’t around when I got married.



Had they been, I would probably have walked down the aisle in a Chelsea shirt and a ra-ra skirt.







If Nick Clegg is worried about where to find the £600 million needed to provide every child under the age of seven with a free school meal, he might want to join forces with the Premier League.



They both seem to enjoy spending vast amounts of other people’s money on headline-grabbing gimmicks.





I have nothing but sympathy for teenage girls, nearly half of whom say they are put off school sport by their PE kit.



Just when your body is at its most awkward, you have to don a micro mini-skirt and a tight-fitting top, and then do star jumps in front of an audience of febrile male classmates.

I’ve never recovered — which is one reason my daughter is going to an all-girls’ secondary.





It must have been the look on my face. Or the furtive way I handed over the goods. They were on to me: possession of a banned substance with intent to supply.

White and powdery in its natural form, the preferred method of preparation is to bring it to the boil, then leave to cool before ingesting it orally. Yes, a toffee. The news that one in four parents sneaks illicit treats into their children’s lunchbox will come as no surprise to most mums.

It certainly didn’t to me. But then I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. Next week, cheese and onion crisps. Walkers. Wish me luck.



