MEDIA STUDIES
How the Prince's spin doctor set the tabloids cheering for Camilla
STEPHEN GLOVER
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles appear to have secured the approval they have long sought. I am not thinking of the Queen, though her blessing was obvious- ly crucial, but of the press. After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997, the newspapers, and especially the tabloids, effectively ruled out marriage between Camilla and Charles. Diana was the most extraordinary, most beautiful and kindest human being that had ever lived. She was `the People's Princess'. Have we forgotten so soon? The nation, we were told, was plunged in grief and would probably never recover. Life would never be the same again. `We are left with a hollow emptiness', said the Mirror. There were 'two billion broken hearts', according to the News of the World. `We will never forget you', promised the Sun. It followed that Prince Charles, who was widely held not to have treated the dead Princess as well as he might, could never dream of marrying his mistress.
Not three years have passed and the same newspapers that so wrung our hearts have almost forgotten Diana and almost forgiven Charles and Camilla. 'Marry her', the Sun generously advised the Prince after the Queen had met Mrs Parker Bowles last Saturday. 'Marry her', said the front page headline in the Mirror. 'Camilla has emerged into the full sunshine', the News of the World informed us. With only one or two exceptions the entire press, broadsheet and tabloid, has offered its benediction. Mrs Parker Bowles, whose low point must have come in 1994 when she was pelted with buns and bread rolls by angry shoppers in a supermarket carpark in Chippenham, has been triumphantly rehabilitated by the Fourth Estate.
It looks like another example of tabloid amnesia. Undoubtedly many people gen- uinely grieved at Diana's death; some were probably surprised by the depth of their grief. But most newspapers did everything they could to magnify the hysteria. And yet having told us that life would never be the same again, and that they would never for- get Diana, they have found new dramas. They cared, but they didn't care as much as they said they did. In the end Diana's death was just another episode, albeit a shattering one, in the turbulent soap opera that the tabloids have created for our national life.
Prince Charles's good fortune has been to have found an adviser who grasped the lim- its of tabloid grief. Mark Bolland, his deputy private secretary and spin doctor, under- stands the press very well, and is friendly with several editors, most notably Rebekah Wade, the former deputy editor of the Sun who has just been appointed editor of the News of the World. Mr Bolland realised that the press would respond to another story because it needs new stories to sustain the soap opera. The new heroine, Mrs Parker Bowles, was no longer young, and had waged no war against the use of landmines. But she had stood by her man, she was loyal and ever in love, and she had endured. Mr Bolland was sufficiently respectful of tabloid feelings not to push too far, too fast, but some 18 months ago he felt able to unveil Camilla in front of the cameras at a party at the Ritz hotel given by her sister. That was a great success. Other ploys included involving Camilla in charity work and taking her to New York last November (Mr Bolland was on hand) where she could be treated as a kind of Queen-in-waiting by American grandees.
Mr Bolland has now squared the press and Buckingham Palace. He appears to have squared the Church of England as well, or at any rate the Archbishop of Can- terbury, Dr George Carey, who has oblig- ingly trotted off to chat with Mrs Parker Bowles on several occasions. One of Prince Charles's unidentified spin doctors (Mr Bolland himself?) even told the Guardian that the Church of Scotland general assem- bly had welcomed Camilla, though a corre- spondent to the newspaper, himself a mem- ber of the general assembly, subsequently denied this. No matter; the Scots can doubtless be brought on side. As he surveys his handiwork, Mr Bolland must be confi- dent that the endgame, which is of course marriage, is now achievable.
And yet the game has not been wholly won. The public remains to be convinced. Mr Bolland probably believes that the tabloids can deliver the people, and he may be right, but there is an outside chance of a backlash, or at any rate of disquiet. Two newspapers seem to be aware of this. On Monday the Mirror declared that 68 per cent of respondents in its poll were in favour of Prince Charles marrying Camilla; it was this that gave rise to the headline `Marry her'. But the next day, after its own readers had overwhelmingly said that they did not like the idea of marriage, and were appalled by the thought of Queen Camilla, the newspaper changed tack. 'Mirror read- ers won't be brow-beaten into accepting Camilla', a leader warned. Meanwhile the Daily Mail was undergoing its own agonies. On Monday the constitutional historian Lord Blake was wheeled out to proffer steady-as-you-go friendly advice, while a second leader also advised caution. BY Tuesday morning the paper's anxieties had increased and, in a long first leader, Dr Carey was chided for his meddling. In an article on the same page billed as 'a personal view from a brilliant young writer', Melanie McDonagh was invited to go where the paper itself did not wish to venture. She was emphatically not prepared to forgive and forget. It is true that on Wednesday morning Lynda Lee-Potter took a contrary view in the Mail, but the paper had none the less sounded a warning. My guess is that Mr Bolland's strategY will probably succeed and that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles will one day be married. But the reaction of the Mirror and the Daily Mail suggests the pos- sibility of a fightback. Papers can tire of the feeling that they are being manipulated. If the tabloids sense that there is still a well of public resentment against Camilla, they could recall their memories of Diana rather quickly. And who then could say where It would end?
Many Sunday mornings will have been ruined by the photograph in the Mail on Sunday of Daniella Westbrook's drug-darn" aged septum, not least Ms Westbrook s. What should we make of this? My first reac" tion was that the paper, and the other tabloids which followed it, should not have, published the picture of her ravaged nose. , seemed a kind of intrusion and was perhaps liable to tip Ms Westbrook over the edge 011 which she was precariously balancing. °1-1 the other hand, the photograph was take tit in public. Perhaps in an attempt to deflec tabloid fire, Ms Westbrook has herself the defended the use of the picture on Y'st grounds that it served as a warning against cocaine use, which is the tabloids' own cPrass', fication. She also suggested that a car : might have made her septum more vullter., ble. I'm not sure, but I think the Mail 0..1: Sunday was right and that my initial reP tion was really one of queasiness.
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