Watching brief - Amanda Platell on lost sheep and royals Down Under
Published 27 October 2003
On Australia's main news bulletin, Tony Blair's health is slightly less important than the story of some lost sheep. But Diana's letter to her butler hits the headlines
I write this week from Down Under where Britain is getting a hard time. First, the antics of the not-very-popular Prince Harry are fuelling anti-Brit feelings. The Australian newspaper is running prime-time TV commercials asking "Tourist or tax burden?" over a picture of the young prince doing a fine impersonation of a Pommie prat in an Akubra hat. Others are more to the point and simply ask: "Prince or parasite?"
The commercials were run through the England v South Africa Rugby World Cup match. It was widely publicised that the prince was attending. The $600,000 cost of his gap-year security arrangements in Australia has not gone down well. That buys a lot of hip replacements in Oz.
Harry's trip has advanced the republican cause to an unimaginable degree. This idle, spoilt young man cries privacy and privilege more often than Cherie Booth, employs dozens of decoy princes to throw the (mostly British) press off his trail, then swans around with the wealthy polo set. He has not endeared himself to the Aussies. They love his mum, but now appear to prefer their royalty deceased.
It's not just the royal family. The British establishment in general is so irrelevant now in Australia, especially to the young, that Tony Blair's heart scare was relegated to well down the running order on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's main news bulletin. It followed a report on the threatened Gorgon gas project and a story about some lost sheep.
Aussies would rather hear Piers Morgan and read the Daily Mirror claiming that Diana was done in than learn of the state of the British PM's health. The claim by the princess's former butler Paul Burrell that she wrote to him saying she feared someone would tamper with her brakes hit the news hard. The only question people are not asking is: how did the investigators manage to miss the evidence?
Then news breaks that Blair is trying to get rid of the Queen. If Morgan is right and the establishment will stop at nothing to remove the irritants, it's a dangerous time for Blair. If I were you, Tony, I wouldn't travel in the back seat of a speeding car being driven recklessly down a concrete tunnel by a lunatic high on drugs and drink.
When Blair's health alarm appeared in the next morning's West Australian, it was relegated to page 23. The unkind suggestion was that a bit of illness and vulnerability might improve the PM's plummeting poll ratings. Even half a world away, people no longer trust Blair.
And to prove that cultural corruption from Britain to the outposts continues apace, we need only switch on the television. Like syphilis before it, reality TV is the modern disease that is wiping out indigenous communities.
As well as Pop Idol and Changing Rooms, Australians have developed a TV hybrid, part game show, part makeover, part fly-on-the-wall. The most popular of these is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which the Fab Five, each more camp than Elton John, "make over" the victim, his home, his culinary skills and his relationship. Imagine a mutation of Jamie Oliver, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and a lesbian Trinny and Susannah. Then there's Wedding Swap, where instead of exchanging vows, two couples exchange weddings, right down to the dresses and rings. Their reward? A free honeymoon. One bride was in tears after having to wear the other bride's sequinned bikini top for a beach reception. She was last seen being carted off on a stretcher made of surfboards carried by six magnificent, bronzed Aussie life-savers.
Bark Off, a Pop Idol for pooches, has pets being forced to perform before one dog is thrown out to shouts of "Bark off!", while the rest are rewarded with bones and dancing lessons.
In his new book, Press Gang, Roy Greenslade relates one tale from the early days on the Sun after the move to Wapping, when the paper was struggling to hit deadlines. He spotted a figure in a grey sweater stooped over a subbing board, laboriously sticking down a piece of copy.
"'For fuck's sake,' I shouted. 'Are you going to take all night with that?' The man turned slowly and I was about to add another epithet when I realised it was Rupert Murdoch."
Walking through the offices of the Herald Sun last week, looking down on the Yarra River, I was whisked past the glass-walled conference room. The place was abuzz with talk that Murdoch was in. "Rupert'll be here soon," my guide said. "He'll be taking - sorry, turning up for - morning conference." Some things never change.
And another anniversary. While in Perth, we celebrated my father's 62nd year as a writer on the West Australian. At 77, he works only two days a week now, but that's the kind of service continuity journalists can only dream about in the UK.
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