I’ve always wondered what was over Paul McCartney’s fence. It is an open secret in the neighbourhood which is his house. He has the sort of gates that bring a little bit of the Home Counties to London and a wall so high you can’t walk past and cast a casual glance into the front window. Now, thanks to Google Street View, not only have I hurdled the barricades to peek, I have also read the number plates of the cars parked behind his forbidding gates.

This is typical of Google: launch first and let people complain after. Already privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint about the controversial new mapping service. I have to admit that it’s more than a little addictive. I started off, somewhat predictably, looking at my house, then feigning outrage that the number plate on my wife’s car parked in the front garden was plainly visible. It had not been obscured as we had all been promised and lodged a complaint with Google, which, 24 hours on, has done nothing about it.

I took a stroll down my street to see whether I should be outraged on behalf of any neighbours only to find three photographs of my wife, again not obscured. It’s lucky for both of us that she was not playing away from home.

Talking about away games, my divorce department has just received its first instructions based on a wife who spotted her husband’s Range Rover at a lady friend’s house, when he said that he was away on a business trip. The putative ex-husband has a singular interest in pimped-up hub caps that were apparently the identifying feature. I suspect the husband’s lawyers will consider bringing in Google as a third party to indemnify against its invasion of privacy that has cost a marriage and will cost him his Range Rover.

One of my secretaries has checked out all her old boyfriends and I’ve had a detailed rundown of their latest motor vehicles, state of their homes and who they are with.

I have also (virtually) visited Arsène Wenger’s rather modest house, Jonathan Ross and a variety of other celebrities. I’d always heard that Arsenal were mean in the wages and a quick look round their players’ homes would seem to bear that out when compared with the virtual palaces of the Chelsea first team. I am put to wondering whether Google Envy is just around the corner.

As for the clearly identifiable “gentleman” pictured exiting a Soho sex shop, undoubtedly he is suffering the acute embarrassment of Max Mosley in having his private predilections exposed for public consumption. I’m afraid the excuse that he was only going in to ask for directions simply won’t wash.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is to look at the complaint received by Privacy International. It is Google’s responsibility, it says, to ensure that the images it uses are blurred satisfactorily.

Meanwhile, I’ve appointed myself chairman of my newly incorporated virtual Neighbourhood Watch with the mission to eradicate the Peeping Toms of Google Street View. Sadly, my first victims, Andy and Jim, were rather pleased at being easily identifiable.

The author is head of media at Finers Stephens Innocent

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