Dani Garavelli - You can't beat kinky cases

IN THESE days of national self-doubt, it's good to know there's one thing we Brits do better than anyone else. Our national teams may not qualify for the European championship, our tennis players may never again win Wimbledon, but when it comes to hanky-panky, we're still at the top of our game.

Some of us are active spankers; for others, it is purely a spectator sport. But what the Max Mosley and the call girls saga has proved is that, as a country, we are as obsessed with the high jinks of the rich and famous as we were when Cynthia Payne's sex parties were raided in the 1980s.

We may be morally outraged, amused or titillated, or a combination of all three, but what we never are is uninterested; however much we like to pretend otherwise, we just can't leave other people to get on with whatever floats their boat.

This fascination with all things kinky has helped us become world leaders in the art of the salacious court case. The trial of Stephen Ward – the pimp who provided the call girls in the Profumo affair – set the standard, providing mind-boggling evidence of two-way mirrors, orgies with whips and marijuana, and a naked, masked male host. The conveyor belt has been rolling ever since.

Appropriately enough, these cases tend to fall in the long, sultry summer months. Just as the news agenda grinds to a halt, out pops another "oops, vicar, where are my trousers?" legal romp to keep us entertained. It's almost as if the judicial system was sending saucy seaside postcard to the nation.

Two years ago, we had the Tommy Sheridan libel trial, in which all the sexual frolics the former SSP MSP categorically did not engage in were laid out for the delectation, sorry, I mean, the contemplation, of the jury. This year it is the turn of Mosley, whose S&M sessions – captured by the News of the World – so shocked the clean-cut world of Formula One racing, to cheer us all up by suing the newspaper for breach of privacy.

I could pause here to reflect on whether or not the journalists involved in exposing the president of the Fédération Internationale De l'Automobile's sexual predilections understood the difference between the phrases "of interest to the public" and "in the public interest". Or to question why someone who feels so strongly about his right to privacy should choose to defend it by bringing a case which necessitated the parading of the most intimate details of his sex life in a public arena? But, frankly, who cares?

The fact that he did means we have been treated to a hilarious Carry On Up The Dungeon insight into the raucous world of bondage. High points in the case so far include a succession of dominatrice in split skirts and stilettos explaining how they beat Mosley, while speaking in exaggerated German accents, and the kind of courtroom one-liners high-class prostitutes seem to excel in. When David Sherbourne, junior counsel for Mosley, held up a striped outfit in an attempt to establish if it was similar to what the "prisoners" were wearing, he said: "I'm not actually going to try it on."

"You should do," retorted Woman A. "It would suit you."

The NoW, too, provided moments of pure farce, like the moment the key witness dropped out hours before she was supposed to give evidence. The NoW's shambling performance reached its apogee when editor Colin Myler claimed the newspaper had the right to publish the story because, by allowing the girls to whip him until he bled, Mosley had instigated a crime against himself.

"I know (blood] was drawn," Myler said, "because he had a plaster on his bottom."

Oh, I know if you look hard enough, there are serious aspects to all this. Role play which involves alleged "German" prison officers subjugating inmates is not the most edifying of behaviour, particularly if you happen to be the son of British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley. But in the absence of any endorsement of Nazi ideology, I can't see how adopting a German theme for a sex game is any more offensive than, say, wearing a T-shirt that says "Adolf Hitler: the European tour" or having your photo taken with the Führer at Madame Tussauds.

Humour may trivialise the important, but it can also be used to strip powerful figures of their credibility. And while I doubt Mosley was trying to lay any ghosts (he was too busy trying to get his rocks off) I reckon he is well able to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Then, there is the whole privacy versus freedom of expression hoo-haa, which I really ought to be able to get myself worked up about. But it's hard to come down too passionately on one side or the other when you can't slip a cigarette paper between the parties in terms of their dislikeability.

Since Mosley is not a politician and has never beaten the drum on moral issues, I guess he's entitled to do what he likes in his spare time – even if it involves deceiving his wife. But for those readers tempted to get all moralistic about the voyeuristic nature of tabloid journalism, I have this parting thought: if, as sexual therapist Pamela Stephenson opined in the Sun last week, bondage, domination, sadomasochism is a "perfectly reasonable part of the very broad tapestry of normal human sexuality" then how perverse can getting turned on by looking at pictures of other people doing it really be?

Road rage - Dani Garavelli on the Government's plans to change car tax