The stench of hypocrisy from the Mirror newspaper in the High Court in London this week has been sickening.

The model Naomi Campbell has been, quite understandably, seeking damages from the paper for publishing a picture of her leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and revealing she was undergoing drug therapy.

I have never met Ms Campbell and, like the vast majority of us, know only what I have read about her over the years.

But I do know about Narcotics Anonymous, or rather more specifically Alcoholics Anonymous - the original version of that genre of therapy.

I understand why the very essence of the success of the international movements relies on the word 'anonymous'.

It is the anonymity afforded to group members that helps them relax, share their experiences of the horrors of alcohol or drugs and benefit from listening to the stories of others.

And that is as true for Naomi Campbell as it is for John Smith.

Without that reassuring safety of anonymity, the movement would cease to exist. At its heart is a sense of mutual trust.

Both the trust and the anonymity were destroyed by the unspeakable scumbag who sold the information about Ms Campbell's attendance at the NA meetings to the Mirror.

By colluding with this creature, using the story and picture, Mirror editor Piers Morgan compounded the act.

It was a sordid deal Mr Morgan should come to regret.

He has already confessed it was wrong to have published a story and picture, when he was editor of the News of the World, of Countess Spencer, Earl Spencer's former wife.

She was undergoing medical treatment at the time. He says he really learned his lesson on that occasion. He quite clearly did not.

The simple truth is the courtroom confessions extracted from Ms Campbell that she lied, threw tantrums, used drugs and all the rest of it were a smokescreen to blur one inescapable fact.

The editor of the Mirror should not have destroyed her anonymity attending those NA meetings and put in jeopardy the anonymity of others seeking help with her.

However, Piers Morgan did reveal one absolute truth about dealing with the Mirror - and other national tabloids.

It is as dangerous, he said colourfully, as going into Hannibal Lecter's cage.

He also revealed rather more of his personal aspirations when he threatened if you voluntarily enter the cage you will eventually be nibbled round the back of the neck.

It is quite outrageous for any editor to say that celebrities who have done deals with newspapers for publicity in the past, or as he put it "invaded their own privacy", forfeit their right to the same basic rights as someone who has not.

How this man loves to play God.

We do not need new privacy laws but we do need editors who know the difference between the public right to know and a newspaper's right to profit from prurience.