Watching brief - Amanda Platell predicts Alastair Campbell's exit
Published 16 December 2002
Who wouldn't be grateful to the woman who managed to transform your Lennox Lewis thighs - even if she did go in for mutual toxin massages and sexual releasing exercises?
A former topless model with perfect breasts and a penchant for dodgy Australian men may be an unlikely Henry Higgins, but this is exactly what Carole Caplin is to Cherie Blair. Caplin transformed the former council estate girl into a beautifully dressed sophisticate, a woman who took to calling her former comrades "oiks" and treating them as though they were something brought in on the underside of her Jimmy Choos.
Let's face it, who wouldn't be in thrall to the person who transformed your Lennox Lewis thighs - even if it cost you two firefighters' salaries for the privilege?
Though the alarm bells should have gone off at the mere suggestion of communal shower sessions with mutual toxin massage and sexual releasing exercises.
The thought of the Prime Minister's wife, knees bent, performing pelvic thrusts to release her sexual chakras - thank you, News of the World - almost separated me from my scrambled eggs on Sunday morning.
But 2002 has proved a bad year for our three first families. The Beckhams are victims of their own excess, the Windsors have been buggered by the butlers and the Blairs, well, who was to know that there were three people in their marriage, too?
When a former topless model brings a world leader into disrepute, she'd usually be having it off with the politician, not smearing mud on his missus in some weird showering ritual.
The Mail on Sunday, which broke the original story of the purchase of the two flats by the convicted fraudster Peter Foster, followed it up the next week with a poll which showed that the government is now only five points shy of Major's 1997 sleaze level. More despised than the royal family, as corrupt as the Tories - that's quite an achievement in just five years for the country's hitherto most popular leader and his formidable spin-machine.
If the trust between No 10 and the political lobby has been damaged, then it is reparable. For large parts of the media, this has always been an abusive relationship, but also totally dependent. I mean, what are they going to do - talk to the Tories?
The real casualty is Alastair Campbell's relationship with Tony Blair. It was clear from the Sunday Telegraph splash - "Blairs ignored warnings by Campbell over Cherie's 'guru'" - that the spin-doctor was briefing against the PM's wife. And who could blame him? But, in the end, Cherie will, and Blair will back his wife.
I expect Campbell will spend Christmas working on his exit strategy.
And if Blair wants to see the full effect of losing one's trusted spin-doctor, then he need look no further than the House of Windsor. From the moment Mark Bolland left Prince Charles's full-time employ, his plans to marry Camilla Parker Bowles have been sunk. The New Year engagement is off.
Everything was on track - a superb jubilee summer, a change in the law to allow the couple to marry in the Church of England and an increasing acceptance from the British people. Now, thanks to the handling of the butlers' trials, Charles is seen as everything Diana condemned him as being - so dysfunctional that he doesn't talk to his mummy, even if the imprisonment of a member of their household depends upon it; so greedy he flogs off state gifts and pockets the cash; and so divorced from real life that he regards a servant's ability to squeeze toothpaste on to his brush as a prerequisite for employment.
The Beckhams have been victims of a vicious website attack on their marriage and a kidnap threat. Posh is a multimillionaire in her own right. Becks tops up his £90,000 a week from Man United with various advertising and sponsorship deals that bring his annual income to around £15m. Victoria and David say they fear for their own safety and for that of their two children, and bemoan their lack of privacy as they step off the set of a Japanese TV ad in which they canoodle for a cosmetics company for a cool £2m. You'd think the Beckhams could be happy with the millions Man United fork out each year.
Other football stars do not pay the personal price the Beckhams are paying, but that's because they don't flog every cough and spit of their lives to the highest bidder. It's not the price of fame this couple are paying, it's the price of greed.
Reclining on a velvet sofa on the front page of the Independent, his matinee-idol looks ravaged by disappointment, Michael Heseltine was more Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard than kingmaker. As he called for the removal of Iain Duncan Smith - just as he has demanded the removal of every party leader since Thatcher - this hypocrite managed only to knock the Blairs' troubles off the day's news agenda.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
