One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was strolling through the streets of our nearest city, soaking up some long-awaited summer sunshine. Relaxed and upbeat, I was determined to enjoy a work-free day, browsing the shops without any target purchase in mind, people-watching while having a coffee on a café terrace, taking in the ambiance of a late August Bank Holiday weekend.

‘Hi – how are you? Do you mind if I stop you for a moment? Can I surprise you with a compliment – and say that I think you look lovely . . ?’

 

Read more: A funny thing happened. . .

As I looked at the guy who’d approached me, I realised that I’d noticed him earlier in the afternoon, walking around with a sense of purpose, a large professional photographer’s camera slung around his neck.

‘I’m a street photographer, you see – I’ve been working on this project where I take pictures of strangers I stop in the street – passers-by who catch my attention because they look interesting, a little different or quirky. Would you mind if I take a few photos? I really like your look. . .’

Cringing slightly at the further compliment – though, like most of us, not immune to flattery either – I stopped as he took out his phone to show me the Instagram page for his project. There were portraits of all kinds of people, and it was immediately clear that he was a talented photographer. As he scrolled through the images, I recognised the face of a local woman who had ‘gone viral’ several months ago – an elegant, naturally beautiful 70-year-old woman with a great sense of style and a lot of poise. Since appearing on the Instagram page, she’d been signed by a local modelling agency and had even landed her first ever acting gig – a non-speaking but significant role in a high-profile theatre production. Unsurprisingly she’d also caught the attention of the media, both local and further afield.

The fact that this guy had been instrumental in such a good news story gave me the sense that he was someone to be trusted. I thought it would be fun to be involved in such a lovely project – why not? (And I won’t deny it, the idea that some interesting opportunities might come my way as a result did flicker through my mind.)

As he began to take a few shots, we chatted and he asked me questions – some of them really quite searching: ‘“What is your biggest regret in life? What would you say to your younger self? What brings you joy?”’, and so on . . .

I replied in the spirit of this chance encounter on a beautiful end-of-summer weekend in the relaxed but buzzy city streets. I was enjoying the conversation – sometimes you’ll say things to a stranger you won’t necessarily say to the people you know.

About 20 minutes into the conversation, I suddenly noticed that this guy had a smaller camera strapped to his chest. I hadn’t spotted it initially, too caught up in the conversation and the novelty of the situation. But now I could see that it had a tiny red light, blinking intermittently, at the top of the screen.

‘Oh. . .  Are you filming this – me, the conversation?’

‘Ah, yes. I am,’ he replied quickly. There was an expression on his face that I couldn’t quite read; later I’d realise it was probably sheepishness, perhaps even guilt. ‘So, as I’m taking the photos, I like to capture my subjects’ words – get something of their take on life, I suppose. . . which I can then post alongside their portraits. . .’

‘But, I had no idea I was being recorded! God – I wonder what I’ve been saying – I really can’t remember!’

He continued to look slightly uneasy. ‘Well, I don’t tend to tell people when I first stop them, as that can take away from the spontaneity of the conversation . . . But you know, I’d never put up anything that was sensitive or private for someone. And really, you haven’t said anything you need to be worried about.’

By now I was feeling a bit uncomfortable myself. But then he said he was turning off the video camera, and we continued to talk, as he reassured me that he felt a great deal of responsibility towards all of his subjects. When we parted a short time later, I was feeling upbeat again. I asked if he could send me whatever he was going to post before it went online, and he agreed. Before we said goodbye, also at my request, he gave me his contact details.

Back at home that evening, I told my husband about the events of the afternoon. Like me, he felt that the street photographer’s approach was casual to say the least, but we agreed that it probably wasn’t anything to worry about. A day or so later, thinking I might had been a bit precious in insisting on seeing any footage in advance, I sent him a quick email, saying that I was sure it would be fine, and not to worry about running anything past me. After all, he mightn’t decide to use the interview at all.

 

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It’s Sunday afternoon, just over a week later. I’m feeling very wound up. The last two nights, I’ve woken in the early hours with my thoughts racing and found myself unable to get back to sleep. I can’t sit still, my stomach is churning, and I feel jumpy and keyed up, primed to react to the slightest thing.

For the nth time, I pick up my phone and log into Instagram via my newly created account, to look once more at the page I’ve been checking obsessively since the previous Thursday night . . .

It’s still there! I mutter to myself with several expletives, feeling the knot in my stomach twisting tighter.

Yes, it is indeed still there – a 60-second video clip of me, talking away happily and unselfconsciously, as I share some of the hard-won wisdom about life I’ve gleaned over the last five decades.

Embarrassing, I’d said to myself the first time I viewed it, but not really that big a deal, I suppose. But as I continued to watch, I saw that in the final ten seconds, I’d blurted out a detail about my current circumstances that I’ve been trying very hard to keep under the radar, having deliberately told only a few trusted people.

The street photographer’s page has 1 million followers. And so far, my ‘reel’ and photos have clocked up 440,000 views, 32.5k likes, and almost 2k comments, as well as a few hundred shares. After less than 72 hours.

For obvious reasons, I won’t go into the detail here of My Big Secret – but I can tell you that it’s not anything exciting, or scandalous, or potentially life-shattering. In fact, people who don’t know anything about me would probably judge it to be harmless, unremarkable, and really not that interesting.

Yet, in the context of my life, its disclosure has the potential to create a lot of discomfort for me, including negative reactions from certain difficult people of my acquaintance.

On the Friday, the morning after the reel went live, I’d contacted the photographer, expressing my concerns and asking if the sentence in question could simply be edited out. He didn’t reply for more than 24 hours – and then only when I’d prompted him – he told me that he couldn’t edit the reel, and that the only alternative was for him to delete the whole thing. So I asked him to do that, as soon as possible. But it took until the Monday for him to act on this – and once more, only when I’d sent a further slightly panicked text.

Hand on heart, I think this guy most likely meant well. (Though of course I’m not naïve enough to believe that there was no personal benefit in the whole exercise for him, in terms of building his own profile, at the very least.)

And there was wonderful feedback on my post – countless supportive, uplifting comments, 99 per cent of them positive (mainly from other women, as my husband noted!). This made me aware that not every social media platform is as potentially toxic as Twitter/X seems to have become; that there are lots of people out there who are willing to be kind and encouraging, even to a perfect stranger. Although to be honest, the latter is something I already knew.

So I’ve now had first-hand experience of how heartening an outpouring of online love can feel – even if sometimes people can get the wrong end of the stick and tend to run with it. So a huge thanks to anyone out there who took the time to comment on the post in this way!

However one of key points to this story is the extent to which, as observers on the outside looking in, we can never truly understand the significance of the small details in the life of a person we know don’t know from Adam. And in my experience, we shouldn’t ever assume that we can. There’s a reason that in this country we have a robust legal framework in place relating to our rights as private individuals to protect our privacy, defend our good name and to ‘control the narrative’ when it comes to what we allow to be released into the public domain on our behalf.

As a ghostwriter, so much of my work is predicated on such important issues of privacy, confidentiality and my clients’ absolute right to decide what to make public about their own lives. So, on reflection and from a professional standpoint, I am more than a little shocked by the cavalier approach of the street photographer. Not only did he not make me aware from the outset that I was being filmed (even the most hard-nosed investigative journalists must do that when talking to convicted criminals),  but he also assumed that he alone could make the call about how that footage would be edited, and when and where it would be posted online. In fact I wasn’t kept in the loop at any stage in the process – and it was only via a WhatsApp from a friend that I discovered that the piece about me had gone live.

I can absolutely assure anyone reading this who is thinking about working with a ghostwriter on a book project that if you chose an experienced professional in the field – as all of us here at UG are – one of the first things they will offer you is a cast-iron guarantee, in the form of a confidentiality agreement and ghostwriting contract, that nothing you disclose during the process of your work together will ever be made public or passed on, to even one other person, without your express permission and that ultimately you are entitled to have the final say on every word in the final manuscript.

As I now know myself, it can be a distressing and oddly disempowering experience when you have no control over what is put onto a public platform about you by someone who has, without your full knowledge, taken possession of your words and images. And I also know that going viral on social media – whatever the potential ego boost or the opportunities this may give rise to – is a very poor substitute for being able to retain the freedom to live in the way you choose, and enjoy the space, time and privacy you may have fought hard to create in your life .