The government announced plans last month to bring an end to the use of wild animals in travelling circuses in England. Great news for animal lovers concerned by the risk of mistreatment and cruelty to animals. But will it herald the demise of this unique entertainment event? If so, help is at hand in the form of the similarly unique spectacle that is the Leveson Inquiry, set up to look into the potential mistreatment of the vulnerable (that’s us, the public) by the feral beasts of the media.

The stars of the show

The first act has seen a cast list reading like an unusual episode of Celebrity Big Brother; blasts from the past, unknowns and A-listers have all sat at the inquiry desk (albeit that this does not yet have the notoriety of the Mastermind chair). There, they have cast aside their desire for privacy off the screen to appear on the screen at the televised inquiry to bemoan the press impact on their private lives. The ranks of celebrities have been joined by a smattering of real people (or ­‘civilians’ as we mere mortals are referred to) lining up with a common purpose of lambasting the press.

Kate McCann, mother of missing toddler Madeleine, described how ­seeing her diary published in the News of the World left her feeling ‘totally ­violated’. She and husband Gerry described the effect of the relentless media coverage and innuendo of their involvement in their daughter’s ­disappearance. Singer Charlotte Church included in her evidence that she was asked to sing at Rupert Murdoch’s wedding for £100,000 but that she ‘would be looked on favourably’ by his newspapers if she waived the fee.

Actor Hugh Grant ­sensationally put the cat among the pigeons, saying he could not think of any other way that the Mail on Sunday would have obtained evidence included in one of its articles, save for the ­hacking of his phone.

But on the other side of the circus tent have been those cheering for the press. Paul Dacre, ­editor of the Daily Mail, responded that Hugh Grant’s claims about his newspaper were ‘mendacious smears’; and in her ­evidence, Liz Hartley, ­manager of ­editorial legal services at Associated Newspapers, denied there was any evidence of hacking at the Mail ­newspapers. The former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan ­shockingly asserted ‘privacy is for ­paedos’, suggesting that if you need privacy you must have something to hide (rather than simply something that others are not entitled to know). Tom Crone, former News of the World legal manager, told the inquiry about his role as a lawyer, stating: ‘I am not a guardian of ethics. I know that sounds crass, but my job was to deal with legal risk.’

Bring on the clowns

A judicial inquiry into matters of such import as the trashing of reputations and the unjustified invasion of privacy, and with the potential of impacting on the vital issue of press freedom, is a serious business. It might not appear to lend itself to comedy (although who would not have enjoyed the evidence just a tad more had comedian Steve Coogan (pictured) started by addressing Lord Justice Leveson, ‘I’m Steve Coogan, Aha!’?). But some entertaining and enjoyable moments have been seen, including when editor of satirical news magazine Private Eye Ian Hislop wittily delivered his views of the ­mainstream media to a chorus of intermittent giggles.

Real people

Whether you are more at home in the red corner with Hugh Grant or the blue corner with Paul Dacre, few would fail to sympathise with landlord Christopher Jefferies, unfairly drawn into news reports about the murder of Joanna Yeates, or the parents of Milly Dowler; real people who explained that, at the hands of the press, they had their ­reputations attacked and ­private lives unjustifiably invaded when thrust into the public eye in very ­harrowing ­circumstances. While the phrase ‘those who live by the camera should die by the camera’ may seem attractive, despite the plethora of celebrities giving evidence the inquiry is a reminder that any of us could find ourselves caught up in a news story, and that we are all at potential risk of the wilder excesses of the media as a result.

Intermission

So, what have we learnt so far? That the press is interested in publishing real stories of public interest, but also in serving the voracious hunger of the public for salacious tittle-tattle; and that celebrities who make their ­livelihood out of appearing on the ­silver screen and/or at the opening of the local supermarket, do not like it when their private lives are intruded upon without their consent, any more than do real people like you and I. But did it really take months of ­evidence from a roll call of ­complainants and press defenders (at a cost of almost £2m so far) to teach us what we surely already know?

It is far too early to tell what the short-term detailed recommendations or the long-term fallout of this inquiry are likely to be. The proposals of PCC chairman Lord Hunt are to launch a new press regulator - with members joining voluntarily and to be bound by contract, enabling fines to be imposed on the badly behaving media ­organisation. But whether such a ­creature - rising phoenix-like from the charred remains of the toothless mediator that has garnered such opprobrium - will find favour with Lord Justice Leveson is not yet clear.

As reported on media law blog Inforrm during the inquiry, Leveson told Lord Hunt: ‘It is rather disturbing the number of times since the last war that we’ve been in a position of great calamity for the press, there has been an inquiry, everybody agrees something must happen that is different, that is taken on board… then disaster happens and everybody starts again.’ But he did mop up some of the cold water he had poured, continuing: ‘If the industry is taking advantage of the time that the inquiry takes to address these concerns, nobody will be more pleased than I will be to be able to feel progress has been made and that a solution has been reached which can be embraced by the industry rather than fought over for the next five years to come.’

Adding some realism however, he went on that the issues had to be seriously grappled with, because otherwise ‘those organisations and people who have spoken about those problems have a legitimate interest in ensuring that they haven’t gone through the pain of [exposure] only to find that nothing really has changed’. The script of the Leveson Inquiry so far may have been as easy to predict as the storyline of a Mills & Boon novel - only with no love lost between the characters. But now the inquiry has moved on to the relationship between the police and the press, it is starting to look as though there may have been slightly too much of a love-in going on.

So continue to roll up, roll up for the inquiry, as ringmaster Leveson continues to direct the assembled troupes in this particular spectacle, to the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of the audience.

Amber Melville-Brown is a partner at Withers