Watching brief - Amanda Platell thinks it's common to hog champers
Published 30 June 2003
What gave the Comedy Terrorist away was his request for a bottle rather than a glass of champagne. Royalty dress in drag all the time; only commoners hog the champers
It would have taken about as many conference hours to make the decision to leave the royal intruder off the front page of the Guardian as it did for the Guardianesque journalists in BBC TV's State of Play to decide whether to run their exclusive on the corrupt MP. In the end, the Guardian murdered the story, a sure sign that it intends to take respect for royal privacy to new heights, to the applause of its readers. It's a dangerous game, ignoring the Windsors, even if your audience disapproves of them. If you can't read about their appalling behaviour, how do you nurture your contempt?
The Independent played it right - for laughs - suggesting the intruder could easily have been mistaken for that friend of royalty, "Tara Palmer-Tomkinson . . . in another misjudged party frock".
The News of the World gets the credit for the fastest turnaround, splashing in later editions on the Sunday with "Nutter storms Wills bash". The Financial Times was perfectly dismissive, damning with faint coverage. It allocated four paragraphs on page six in the News Digest, with a head shot of the shadow work and pensions minister, David Willetts, at the top of the column.
And what exquisite irony that it was neither the apricot frock nor the matching Bin Laden beard and pubic hair that alerted suspicion, but Aaron Barschak's request for a bottle rather than a glass of champagne. Nothing is more common in royal circles than dressing in drag, but only commoners hog the champers.
Many are wondering why the marvellous story in the Sunday Times about the top Tory aide and the topless parties was not followed up by other papers. Dougie Smith, co-ordinator of the think-tank Conservatives for Change (Cchange), founded by Francis Maude and supporters of Michael Portillo, was said to be organising five-star orgies for swingers. And we're not talking swing voters here. Smith confirmed that he has been "bringing together a fashionable London set of professionals for sex parties . . . attended by up to 50 couples at a time with participants swapping partners and taking part in unusual combinations".
I was first alerted to this group when working for William Hague, but dismissed it as a smear on the reputations of the Portillistas, especially as two of those supposedly taking part were brothers, one happily married and the other unhappily gay. The embarrassment for the Portillistas, now renamed the Modernisers, is that these sex parties rather distract from the fine thinking they have been doing. Cchange was supposed to be a vehicle for big ideas. Now it is just a big vehicle for shagging. The red tops may now be trying to penetrate the orgies. The Modernisers should beware young men dressed as Arab sheikhs calling themselves Mazher.
Are we to read anything into how the fab new redesigned Today programme website does not include Thought for the Day in its comprehensive running order? One must venture into the Religion and Ethics ghetto to discover that last Tuesday morning's offering, by Shagufta Yaqub, was a series of thoughts so banal that they were enough to bury this contentious item for ever. Speaking on the gripping subject "What do Muslims make of the 'Comedy Terrorist'?", she informed us that "humour should be about laughing with people, not at them" - the kind of thought we can think for ourselves. Such worthless observations give weight to Harold Pinter et al when they seek to scrap what has been at times a wonderful slot on the Today programme.
And then there is the mystery of the missing thoughts. Just what has happened to Lavinia Byrne? Is it true that her thoughts are no longer required, but that no one from Religion and Ethics has found the moral courage to tell her?
The Guardian has delivered on the request by Gerald Kaufman's culture and media committee for a league table of complaints against national newspapers. No surprises who is top of the class. Yes, the Guardian commendably comes in with only one complaint upheld against it, but the sin sisters, the Sun and News of the World, have 20 and 19 apiece. Given that the list is so old the Today newspaper is still on it, and that the worst offender has had only 20 complaints upheld in 12 years, I'd say it is argument enough that self-regulation is working rather well indeed.
This year the BBC has assembled a great line-up of former stars to commentate on Wimbledon. The day Lleyton Hewitt was knocked out, John McEnroe and Boris Becker were analysing his defeat. McEnroe was as passionate in the commentary box as he ever was on court, articulate and insightful.
As for the grunting, monosyllabic Becker, I hope for the BBC's sake it is paying him by the word. He showed all the finesse of the kind of man who prefers sex with strangers in broom cupboards.
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