Dialogue: Enough of all this drivel over royals

By DEBORAH ORR of the Independent

Bloodied but unbowed by its predictable failure to convince anyone at all that the Conservatives remain "the natural party of government," the Daily Mail on Monday made a full-pelt retreat to the safer uplands of constitutional monarchy.

Here, unhindered by the exigencies of electoral democracy, the collective culture of the newspaper can gorge on the strong meat of unearned privilege, safe in the knowledge that these prejudices can remain unchallenged, unlikely as they are to be put to the popular vote in the foreseeable future.

How very soothing it must have been for the executives of the tabloids to sink back into the arms of the royal family, peddling the usual inconsequential gossip and voyeurism as national news, and returning to pushing unquestioning public relations material as some sort of genuine proof that all is well with one little corner of their hateful little world.

Thus, a significant portion of the front page of the Mail and the Mirror, and all of page 3, was given over to the dissemination of the news that Prince Harry knows some girls. He has "picked up" one of these girls (then popped her back down on her feet again), and he has kissed one of these girls (but only fleetingly, on the cheek). All this, having taken place as usual at a polo event, was the "horseplay" of a healthy 16 year old. Nudge, nudge ...

A large panel on the Mail's front page also signalled the editorial presence of the boy's late mother, with pages and pages inside explaining just one more time: "How she took her revenge on the royals." All this, say the same sources, stems from the unfortunate fact that Diana Spencer was an "unhealthy" 16-year-old. Shame!

On the pages of the tabloids, The Times and the Daily Telegraph, the limits of her success as a wreaker of vengeance are amply illustrated, as a host of fawning pieces report on the lovely, lovely 80th birthday endured yesterday by Prince Philip.

"It's not so much the age," our beloved court jester quipped, "but trying to survive these celebrations." Boom! Boom!

Meanwhile, on another page of the Mail, the columnist Peter McKay adds his tuppence-worth to the party by noting the "hypocritical" absence of Charles' girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles. McKay cheers everyone up again, though, by assuring his readers that Camilla is making "incremental advances" in the casting away of her "uncertain status." Hurrah!

It is also noted by the newspapers, sadly, that Prince William, that ace in the royalists' hole, is still in Africa on his gap year. So no William stories, at this time of need, in the Mail. Never mind though, because the televisual equivalent of the Mail, television Channel 5, had covered the waterfront with a documentary on William, The Student Prince.

Gathering all the scant footage of the young saint, and finding it wanting, its indefatigable researchers nevertheless interviewed St Andrews undergraduates about the luminary soon to be in their presence. "It's about time this place became fashionable," said one of them with anticipatory excitement at the prospect of being burnished by association. Gratuitously privileged and vicariously trendy.

Switching straight over on Sunday from Channel 5 to ITV, lucky subjects could catch a further royal brief, this time the documentary which gave the Daily Mail with its "new angle": Diana: Story of a Princess.

This, a four-part life, marks the non-occasion of the Princess' 40th birthday, and was made by Brian Lapping, a much-admired maker of high-quality, serious documentaries. Because of this, the very existence of this film has been greeted with consternation by those who count themselves as the natural enemies of the Daily Mail worldview.

These people, generally but not rigidly, count themselves as the natural enemies of popular culture as well, and it is interesting to note that Princess Diana's legacy to the royal family, a legacy fully formed before she even started searching for "vengeance," is to have repositioned the royals firmly, if hilariously uncomfortably, at the heart of popular culture.

A swathe of the media appears to afford the royal family the same constitutional importance as the Spice Girls (and often bags them both in the same picture), but actually, as can be seen in this post election bonanza, it binges on royal stories for comfort in the manner that Princess Diana once did on Mars bars.

While the comfort might seem fleeting, in fact, as in the case of Diana, it gets the otherwise apathetic out to cast a sympathy vote. The public feels guilty about media intrusion, and its own part in it, so bizarrely that the intrusion itself becomes a shield from serious debate or left-wing intent.

Meanwhile, as the Mail chivvies along its imagined-to-be-reeling readers with the reassuring presence of unchanging, hereditary leadership, A.N. Wilson, of sister paper the London Evening Standard, dares to go further. Writing about Prince Philip, and what a fine fellow he is, Wilson declares: "He is good-looking, has an excellent speaking voice and would have made a far better national leader for our country than most of the Prime Ministers since the war. Any chance of a small coup, even at this late date, replacing Tony and Cronies with a junta, chiefly of naval officers, with a few from the Army, and Prince Philip at the controls?"

Wilson, of course, is one of those often curiously adorable creatures, a right-wing libertarian, and his suggestion is therefore, one assumes, laced with satirical intent. As well it should be.

It is an odd democracy indeed which reaches for the consolation of hereditary leadership, symbolic or otherwise, for infotainment in the wake of a thinly subscribed exercise in democracy.

It is an even more odd one which is complicit in the fact that the infotainment itself is a guarantee that the status quo won't change.

- INDEPENDENT