Did you hear the one about Prince William
enjoying a series of dates with Emma Parker
Bowles, the 24-year-old niece of his father's
consort?
Shame the pair only ever met the once - but
that did not stop The People from running an
article about the prince's infatuation in
February 1999.
Or the News of the
World scoop last
August that Holly
Branson, daughter of
the Virgin boss, Sir
Richard Branson, was a
close personal friend of
the prince.
Far from it - the pair
last met half a lifetime
ago, when as
8-year-olds they built
sandcastles on the
beach at Necker, Sir
Richard's Caribbean retreat.
Then there was the Sunday Express article
about the budding romance between William
and Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, 20.
The It-girl's father fired off a missive to the
Press Complaints Commission (PCC), pointing
out that the supposed couple had never met.
The commission issued a rebuke to the
over-zealous newspaper.
As the prince prepares to enter the adult
world, PCC chairman Lord Wakeham has called
on the media to respect his privacy and do
their best to get their facts right.
Like father, like son
Prince Charles suffered a similar fate before he
wed the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
By the time the future
king was in his early
20s, the number of
"suitable brides" topped
the 60-mark. Some he
had never met.
And Princess Diana was
herself no stranger to
media attention, from
the day she became a
prospective bride until
her death almost two
decades later.
The Mirror ran into trouble in 1997 when it ran
a front-page photo of Diana and her
companion, Dodi Fayed, apparently locked in
an embrace.
Through the wonders of technology, the
holidaying couple had been positioned closer
together to simulate a kiss.
Not amused
A year earlier, the PCC upheld the first-ever
complaint by the Queen after Business Age
magazine named her as the richest person in
the UK.
Her majesty was not amused that the paper's
speculative report wrongly estimated her
personal wealth at £2.25bn.
Yet inaccurate royal
stories are hardly a
modern development -
it is just that the
stories have become a
little more prurient.
In the 1950s, Women's
Own magazine ran a
weekly column by
Marion Crawford, the
former nanny of the
little princesses,
written as if she had
been in attendance at
royal events.
She had, in fact, been ostracised by the
Windsors for penning a book about life inside
the palace walls.
The lengthy colour printing processes of the
day meant the magazine's reporters took it in
turns to write the column six weeks in
advance.
So when Trooping the Colour and Royal Ascot
were cancelled because of rail strikes in 1955,
Crawfie's Column lovingly recounted two
events that had never happened.
Like many a royal rumour, the column proved
to be but a fairytale.
~*~
Queen's Civil List money frozen for 10
years(Electronic Telegraph)
By Rachel Sylvester
THE Queen is to have the money she receives from the Government through
the Civil List frozen for the next 10 years, under a deal struck between
Buckingham Palace and the Treasury.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and the Royal Household have agreed that
the funding should be set at £7.9 million a year until 2011, the same amount it
has been since 1991. The Queen will have to pay for increases in her
out-goings from a reserve fund, worth almost £30 million which has built up
through surplus payments over the past 10 years, Treasury sources said.
The Civil List payments, used to cover staff and other royal expenses, have
been based on the assumption that inflation would be 7.5 per cent, more than
double the current annual rate of three per cent. At the same time, the
Palace's rise in expenditure has been less than inflation over the 10-year
period because millions of pounds have been saved through cost-cutting
exercises.
After negotiations over the past six months, Buckingham Palace has also
agreed to take on some expenses which are funded separately by the
Government. This could cover the pensions of royal staff, which are paid by
the Treasury but not included in the Civil List.
Although the Royal Family cannot repay money received through the Civil
List, the deal will effectively mean funds being transferred back to the
taxpayer. The Royal Family is said to be happy with the arrangement and
Palace sources said discussions with Mr Brown had been "amicable". The
Chancellor is to announce the deal before Parliament rises for the summer.
Palace officials agree that the deal struck by John Major in 1991 was too
generous. The Queen gets £7.9 million, the Queen Mother £643,000 and the
Duke of Edinburgh £359,000 a year. Detailed accounts of royal expenditure
over the past 10 years will be published when the new deal is announced.
~*~
William consulted over rules for
editors(UK Times)
BY ANDREW PIERCE
PRINCE WILLIAM played a key role in the complex
negotiations that led to the new guidelines to protect him
against media intrusion.
Lord Wakeham, chairman of the Press Complaints
Commission, had lunch with the Prince of Wales and his
two young sons at Highgrove earlier this year.
Also present was Mark Dyer, a temporary equerry to the
Prince of Wales, who has become an important adviser
and friend to Prince William. Mr Dyer, known as Captain
Charming at St James's Palace, has been entrusted by
Prince Charles with finalising arrangements for Prince
William's forthcoming gap year.
Buckingham Palace and St James's Palace issued a rare
joint statement applauding the PCC guidelines. The
statement said: "The Queen and the Prince of Wales
welcome Lord Wakeham's speech.
"In setting out clear guidelines for the future the PCC is
building on the restraint shown by newspapers and
magazines to Prince William and Prince Harry while they
have been at school.
"Lord Wakeham's speech underlines the importance of
personal privacy but recognises Prince William's special
position and the legitimate public interest in him."
Lord Wakeham also spoke by telephone to Prince
William at Eton. A draft of the speech was sent to the
school before yesterday's launch.
At the unveiling of the new guidelines, Lord Wakeham
declined to say which passages in the nine-page speech
had been influenced by Prince WIlliam. He said: "He is
not without an opinion on these matters. I had a lively,
friendly and warm discussion with him but I would rather
not be drawn on the detail. Prince William knows
perfectly well what is going on."
St James's Palace also declined to comment on whether
Prince William had made any amendments to the text or
had made any suggestions of his own.
However, the harsh warning to the newspapers which had
wrongly linked Prince William to young girls he had either
not met or barely knew was thought to have emanated
from Eton.
The PCC chairman said in his speech: "Such fundamental
inaccuracies are unacceptable."
He said that he welcomed the input from Prince William.
"It has been part of his growing-up. I found his
contribution very useful."
The PCC blueprint was welcomed by the editors of
tabloid newspapers.
Piers Morgan, the Editor of The Mirror, said: "There
needs to be a prudent balance struck between protecting
the future King from the media and using the same media
to promote the trump card in what appears to be an
institution in dire need of some positive publicity."
David Yelland, editor of The Sun, said: "The old era of
gross invasion of privacy has gone and I will play no part
in bringing it back."
~*~
Interest in Diana exhibition wanes(Electronic Telegraph)
By Maurice Weaver
FALLING public interest in Althorp House, the former home of Diana,
Princess of Wales, means that tickets will be on sale at the gate for the first
time from this weekend.
Only half of the 150,000 tickets have been sold so far for the season,
between July 1 and Aug 30, compared with 147,000 visitors who all paid in
advance last year.
Shelley Ann Claircourt, spokesman for Earl Spencer, who owns the
Northamptonshire estate, said: "It is three years since the Princess's death and
we did not expect the phenomenal interest to be sustained."
Workmen were yesterday putting the finishing touches to the house, grounds
and museum in readiness for Saturday's opening. New rooms in the 16th
century house are being opened for viewing.
These include the 115ft picture gallery which is dominated by Van Dyke's
War and Peace and features The Windsor Beauties, a collection of portraits
of Charles I's female liaisons. Two state bedrooms, the Queen Mary
bedroom and the Oak bedroom will also be on show.
~*~
Sorry, says Mowlam as MPs rush to her
defence(Electronic Telegraph)
By Andy McSmith, Chief Political Correspondent
MO MOWLAM said sorry yesterday for the controversy caused when she
called upon the Royal Family to vacate Buckingham Palace.
She made her brief apology on her way into a police conference about drugs
in Blackpool, telling reporters: "I apologise for any hurt I have caused." Later,
Tony Blair made his first, equally brief, public comment on Dr Mowlam's
remarks that the Queen should move to "a palace of the new century". On
Tuesday, he had swiftly distanced himself from them via his spokesman, who
said the Prime Minister was an ardent supporter of the monarchy.
Yesterday, Mr Blair was replying to a sarcastic question in the Commons
from the Liberal Democrat MP Paul Tyler, who asked whether he would be
vacating 10 Downing Street and whether it was Government policy to ask
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to leave her London residence, Clarence
House. Mr Blair told him: "I think we should all stay put."
A Downing Street spokesman said that Mr Blair had not spoken directly to
Dr Mowlam about her suggestion that the royals should move out of
Buckingham Palace. The Government is anxious to avoid giving the
impression that they have turned on Dr Mowlam, who is much admired for
the way that she has coped with a brain tumour.
A poll in yesterday's Mirror confirmed that Dr Mowlam is still the most
popular member of the Cabinet by a long way. While 11 per cent of voters
said they were dissatisfied with the job she is doing as Minister for the
Cabinet Office, an extraordinary 60 per cent were satisfied - an "approval"
rating of plus 49.
Her rating has increased in the past month, though it is not as high as it was
when she was at the Northern Ireland Office. By contrast, Tony Blair had a
negative score, of minus four, while the second most popular Cabinet minister
behind Dr Mowlam, the Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, scored plus 17.
Yesterday, a Labour MP warned of the political repercussions if Dr Mowlam
were removed from the Cabinet. Paul Flynn said: "She is the best-loved of all
British politicians of any party. She has enormous support for her great
courage and many people in this country, especially women, identify very
strongly with her.
"I believe that she is genuinely unassailable. She can't be moved. She is a
lovely human being and we are all crazy about her. We must accept that
Government ministers, by taking office, are not lobotomised and are still
capable of intelligent thought and should be allowed to express it."
He added:"Downing Street would be well advised to allow an intelligent
discussion on what is a very serious point. Why on earth shouldn't we discuss
the future of royalty in a grown-up way? There isn't support for the Royal
Family as people who have stepped out of a fairy tale and have to be kept in
a billionaire lifestyle for ever.
"This was accepted in previous centuries, but people are being very critical
now of one family occupying eight palaces when just one of these palaces has
600 rooms. This is housing over-provision on a vast scale."
The Labour MP Diane Abbott also rushed to Miss Mowlam's defence,
saying: "The Queen's accommodation, just like that of my council tenant
constituents, is funded by public money and it is a reasonable subject for
public debate. I am not suggesting the removal vans should go up The Mall
tomorrow, but I do think it is a perfectly reasonable thing for Mo to bring up."
~*~
Prince 'loses readers' in circulation war(Electronic Telegraph)
By Matt Born
LISTENING to the warm gurgling noises emanating from Fleet Street
yesterday, it would have been easy to forget that the Press Complaints
Commission was imposed on reluctant newspapers to curb their worst
excesses.
Colin Myler, editor of the Sunday Mirror, praised Lord Wakeham's call for
restraint yesterday as realistic and sensible and promised to continue to
"respect the Prince's right to privacy". He said: "Papers have been very
restrained over the past five years. We won't now go into reverse and throw it
all away."
David Yelland, the Sun editor, went further, hailing Lord Wakeham as a
"great civilising force on the newspaper industry and therefore on the country",
before declaring: "The old era of gross invasion of privacy has gone and I will
play no part in bringing it back." But then Piers Morgan, the editor of the
Mirror, went and spoiled it all.
Rather than principled self-sacrifice, newspapers were only acting out of base
self-interest by promising to leave Prince William alone, he said. For pictures
of Prince William were, he claimed, of far less value to newspaper sales than
those of Anna Kournikova or Britney Spears. Morgan said: "Prince William
has been afforded almost total protection from press attention in the last few
years and I'm sure he will continue to do so throughout his time at university.
But the biggest problem for the Royal Family is not going to be papers such
as the Mirror paying them too much interest. It will be us paying them too
little.
"Recent circulation figures for front-page stories and pictures of the Royals
suggest to me that the British public, and William's peer group in particular,
are increasingly uninterested in the Monarchy." Morgan cited evidence to
support his thesis: on the Saturday the papers published the official pictures of
Prince William to mark his 18th birthday, sales of the Mirror fell by about
50,000 copies.
But the Mirror could be the exception. Sales of two other tabloids, the Sun
and the Daily Express, are understood to have held steady and the circulation
of The Daily Telegraph made significant gains that day. Certainly, rival
newspaper executives think Morgan is being premature in penning an obituary
for royal stories.
A senior executive on a rival tabloid said: "I think Piers is being disingenuous.
Everyone did quite well out of the William pictures. But it was a hot day, and
people were gearing up for the England-Germany football match and we all
had the same shots, so it was never likely to be a blockbuster."
Worryingly for St James's Palace, the implication is that exclusive pictures of
the Prince - even ones which involved infringing his privacy - would be too
commercially lucrative for an editor to resist. Again, the executive disagrees.
He said: "A notable change in the past couple of years is that editors are
reluctant to stick their head above the parapet by publishing pictures no one
else is using."
Myler also believes that the public has lost little of its interest in the royals, and
Prince William in particular. He said: "Prince William is the Royal Family's
biggest asset. He's a good-looking young chap who appears to be growing
into a terrific young lad. My fear is that the current restraint will disappear
when he becomes linked romantically with a young girl."
A story in the Sunday Express, cited by Lord Wakeham, which claimed a
romance between Prince William and Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe,
when in fact the pair had never met, was a case in point of "ridiculous and
unwarranted" intrusion, Myler says, adding: "It is that constant attention which
will make it unbearable for the Prince."
The consensus among editors is that, post-Diana, there has been a shift in the
public tolerance of royal stories, and that Lord Wakeham's statement
captured that zeitgeist. Another red top executive said: "There is a new
generation of young editors who are in tune with that new mood. If you
published pictures of Prince William kissing Britney Spears, you'd put on an
extra half a million sales that day, but there would be a backlash and you'd
lose two million the day after.
"Given what happened to his mother, William is a special case and the rest of
Fleet Street would crucify you." This week, both the Sun and Daily Mail
published pictures of Peter Phillips, Princess Anne's son, on holiday with
friends. Would Prince William be considered fair game in similar
circumstances? Most editors think he would.
Myler said: "In the unlikely event of Prince William going on holiday in
Magaluf at the height of the season, I'm sure he'd understand if we published
the pictures." Similarly, if a photographer finds the Prince drunk in an
Edinburgh gutter during Freshers Week, he can expect to find plenty of
buyers on Fleet Street.
Charles Moore, the editor of The Daily Telegraph, is concerned that Prince
William's "need for privacy should not disappear just because he's 18". He
said: "Everyone has a right to privacy. This is particularly true of young people
pursuing their education." Overall the consensus is that Lord Wakeham's call
for restraint will be heeded, if only because editors, unlike the royals, do not
have jobs for life.
One red-top editor said: "In the end, the Royal Family have the nuclear option
that could blow any newspaper which strays over the limit out of the water. If
Prince William says, 'They are doing to me what they did to my mother, don't
buy the Daily Planet newspaper', that editor is toast."