I love gossip and because I am a novelist I am allowed to like it, since I can pretend that sitting around my kitchen table gathering information about the lives of my friends and neighbours is a work resource.

John McGahern was famous for it and most of the writers I know love nothing more than a good old root around the motivations and minutiae of other people's lives.

My mother always taught me there was only one thing worse than being talked about and that was not being talked about. If people said mean things it was because they were jealous. And if people were jealous of you it meant you had "made it".

It was a useful remit to live and work by and generally I don't mind what people say about me behind my back as long as they are nice to my face. In fact, I rather like picking up stuff about myself. Apparently I am a multi-millionaire and once had an affair with my boss. So much more fun than the real thing which is not being a millionaire, multi or otherwise and not having affairs with anyone at all.

Gossip only really hurts those who care and, of course, some people are more interesting to gossip about than others. The best are the people with 'privacy issues'. Those who wheel themselves out for mass looking all smart and special, smiling politely - then nobody sees hide nor hair of them for the rest of the week.

They don't like people calling to the house, they don't join committees or are ever seen out looking frazzled or moaning about the weather. The women are often elegant and the men friendly but distant. They never go to the local pub, and they do their supermarket shopping outside the local town so nobody knows what they eat. They have a horror of people knowing their business but what they never realise is aloofness breeds curiosity.

Privacy obsessives like that drive me half mad.

What are they doing in there? I could sit and speculate for hours - and on occasion do. That brand of aloofness is often taken as snobbery.

We're too posh to let people know what we're doing. The plebs couldn't handle it if they knew what we ate for dinner, it's nobody's business but our own. So that amateur detectives like me sit around thinking: "Why don't they shop locally?

What are they eating in there? Their children?

Our missing pets?" But I don't think it is about snobbery - or even decorum. I think it's about fear. It's about keeping themselves safe from the outside world, not engaging too much with people who are outside of their remit of experience and understanding - staying in complete control of their environment and trying to stay in control of how other people perceive them. I think that must be a very restricting and lonely way to live.

But then what do I know, because bad and all as the ghastly Celebrity Big Brother contestants are - they are the opposite of that. Putting every inch of their personalities and bodily functions on show 24/7 for the entertainment of millions. Somehow it's still not as entertaining as speculating about the neighbors. Maybe we should keep our blinds closed and preserve some of life's mystery after all.