Every morning Paul Convery walks out of his front door to be confronted by piles of discarded coffee cups and sandwich wrappings. There is an unmistakable stench of urine. The pavements are filled with stocky, intimidating men with glowering expressions and the parking spaces have all been taken by battered 4x4s that have not paid or displayed.
'The neighbours down the road are woken nightly at around 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 whose picture is much in demand from tabloid 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 moved 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 use with ease. They are very aggressive and remind me of the hard men you would try to avoid 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 rash of tabloid 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 oversized wedding ring, looking sheepish. Then there have been the constant snatched images of Amy Winehouse shuttling to and from rehab and the blurry shots of Sienna Miller wrapped around a new boyfriend.
The pursuit has been relentless. Miller, who has been dating the married actor Balthazar Getty, broke down in tears at a Los Angeles garage on Monday when photographers swarmed round her car and asked questions about her alleged 'home-wrecking'. She later complained to police and was given an escort back to her Beverly Hills hotel.
Last week the actress Keira Knightley complained that paparazzi intrusion was 'a very predatory force'. 'When you are leaving your front door and paparazzi, who are a lot bigger than you, are shouting "You're a whore" to try to make you cry - that obviously is not great,' she said in an interview with Tatler magazine. 'If you look at the biggest film stars, they do not get paparazzi'ed that much, partly because they've already had it so much that they just close themselves off in their houses and don't leave them.'
After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car chase in 1997, there was a collective pause for breath by newspaper and magazine editors who pledged not to use snatched images. But now, 11 years later, the fragile boundary between feeding the public interest and maintaining an individual's right to privacy appears to have been breached by a new breed of guerrilla paparazzi.
The market has taken a disquieting turn. Our ghoulish fascination with images depicting stars in various states of disintegration has ensured that these pictures often carry a higher monetary value. Just think of Winehouse, chalk-faced and bleary-eyed, pictured wandering the streets in her underwear last December. Or Britney Spears, who was photographed strapped to a hospital stretcher in January after tearfully refusing to hand over custody of her children. Both images would have sold for thousands of pounds.
'I don't know 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 one showbiz photographer who declined to be named. 'The problem is you're getting more and more freelance guys who think they can make a quick buck just by buying a camera and pitching up on a doorstep. They can be quite aggressive and focused. They're like hunters following prey, because the game has got much more competitive and that encourages a kind of survival of the fittest.'
Almost anyone can be a paparazzo now - all that is required is a digital camera, sharp eyes and a satnav that can direct you to Sadie Frost's house in Primrose Hill. Bystanders can take snaps of celebrities on their mobile phones and sell them to gossip websites within minutes. Heat magazine alone 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 fun escapism.' A full-size picture of the most bankable celebrities - Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Knightley or Miller - can fetch £200. But the value of the shot depends on the story behind it: an exclusive set of Winehouse leaving a rehab clinic, for instance, can be worth up to £30,000.
'Female celebrities always sell better than men because the magazine readership is overwhelmingly female,' says Alex Stanger, an entertainment reporter for BBC News 24. 'Women want to see other women not looking so great. A shot of someone's armpit hair or cellulite sells more than a lovely, set-up, airbrushed photo.'
The increasingly fevered competition means that a dedicated paparazzo must stick like glue to his target. This has led to a surge in the number of car chases - or 'follows', in paparazzi-speak. Not for nothing has the new generation of showbiz photographers become known as 'the stalkerazzi'. John Mayer, the singer-songwriter ex-boyfriend of Jennifer Aniston, complained earlier this month that photographers were routinely breaking the speed limit and shooting red lights.
In fashionable areas, the joke goes that you are never more than six 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 regulatory measures such as making them have a fluorescent 'P' on their number plates. Elsewhere, a group of Malibu locals attacked paparazzi who were trying to take shots of the actor Matthew McConaughey surfing.
'Celebrities are constantly being hounded now because the market is so saturated,' says Stanger. 'I interviewed George Clooney recently 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 next to him will start filming him on their camera phones. That means it is getting a bit more vicious.
'But it's a two-way street: celebrities need paparazzi as much as the paparazzi need them, and some of them will have a relationship with certain photographers. Victoria Beckham was always rumoured to have a guy she would call up to say: "I'm going to the petrol station at this time, take a photo of me then."
'It's a weird, double-edged relationship. Amy Winehouse makes tea for her paparazzi and Britney Spears ended up going out with one [Adnan Ghalib], so it's almost like they're the only friends they have 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 alone. If the famous do not seek attention, so the argument goes, it is easy to avoid.
'If they don't like it, they can just move,' says Perez Hilton. 'Julia Roberts moved to New Mexico. Sandra Bullock moved to Texas. There's nothing worse than celebrities who complain or hide their faces for pictures. So long as the paparazzi aren't breaking the law, celebs just need to put up with it.'
Certainly it would be unfair to assume that the paparazzi are operating in a vacuum. They are simply feeding the demand, both from the public and from the celebrities themselves. There is, too, a certain code of honour among agency photographers, who react with horror if you label them with the 'p'-word.
'I would say very strongly that our organisation would not condone anyone making a celebrity cry,' says Alan Williams, chief executive of Big Pictures. 'I'm not saying 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 succour to the likes of the unfortunate Paul Convery, who is not a celebrity and has never sought to be. As he continues to battle his way through the disposable barbecues, one can only hope that Peaches doesn't do anything too newsworthy in the weeks to come. Perhaps, as Perez Hilton suggests, she should move 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 next door to Amy Winehouse is no easy ride. It's not so much the antics of Amy herself that keep her neighbours up at night, but rather those of the small army of hangers-on and paparazzi milling around at all hours.
Though she is hardly ever around, Amy-watching is a 24-hour-a-day industry, with the end of the road always blocked with cars and scooters, while taxis and deliveries arrive at all hours, causing the street to be lit up with flashes.
Bored with hanging around all day and night, 3am games of football among paparazzi using parked cars as goalposts are not 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 one of the safest and most crime-free in the whole of north London.
Even if it is mostly through a siege mentality, her presence encourages conversation between neighbours and even promotes a small sense of community not 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 little curious or even jealous.
David Hewitt
