AS exposs go, yesterday's revelation that Home Secretary David Blunkett has been having an affair with a married women for three years was surprisingly sympathetic.

The News of the World was quick to say that Mr Blunkett should not resign for his misdemeanours, and told how Mr Blunkett was wrestling with his conscience over the affair.

He came across as a sad character, rather like Prince Charles: the pressures of his public life preventing him from having a happy and fulfilling private life with the person of his choosing.

For his part, Mr Blunkett simply said: "I have defended all politicians' rights to a degree of privacy in their private life."

Increasingly, though, public figures don't have any privacy.

We've just been through a similar scandal at the Football Association. It was a tawdry affair but, like Mr Blunkett who divorced 14 years ago, England manager Sven Goran Eriksson was single and so free to do as he pleases in private with his consenting secretary.

Various parts of the media tried to dress up a public interest defence for the expos: Sven, they said, was a national role model setting a very bad example.

Similarly, Mr Blunkett's tale could be presented as in the public interest. After all, the political hot potato of the moment is whether fathers in families prevent youngsters from falling into crime, and yet here is the Home Secretary effectively breaking up a family.

But that really is spinning the story into a distortion of the facts.

Before we get all high and mighty about the disgraceful intrusion of the tabloids, though, it is worth considering whether any one of us truly has a private life.

After all, if two executives in your office are dating the same secretary, everyone'll be talking about it behind their backs at the watercooler. If someone in your street is carrying on with a married woman, people will be gossiping about it over the fences, at the corner shop and in the local pub.

And, of course, practically everyone had an opinion about Sven and his colourful private life.

A love of tittle-tattle at all levels is part of human nature, and until that changes, newspapers will continue to print stories that intrude into the private lives of public personalities.