ANOTHER VOICE

Is she bonkers, or does she bonk?

AUBERON WAUGH

What impressed me most about the stu- dio audience was its open-mindedness. It seemed almost unanimous in its approval of the News of the World's decision to print the news of nuisance calls to a London art dealer being traced to the private tele- phone numbers of the Princess of Wales. This may well have been a 'first' for Britain, where the public prefers to read as much filth as the tabloids have to offer, and then complain bitterly about being informed.

There was little tendency to believe the Princess's protestations that she did not know how to operate a coin telephone. One was reminded of the great Lord Good- man's dictum, that if you are unjustly accused of stealing an apple, you say, 'No, I didn't steal the apple.' You do not say, 'I don't like apples and in any case I was in New York at the time.' When the debate grew rather heavy, with young Morgan insisting that nuisance telephone calls were a serious offence, and it was even more serious to Tell a Lie to the tabloid press, I suggested that neither offence was in the least bit serious and we should be enor- mously grateful to the Princess for all the happiness the incident had brought us. That sentiment raised a cheer, but so did almost any other, from expressions of acute dislike for the lady in question — 'Lady Di — don'cha hate her?"Hear! Hear!' — to avowals of adoration — 'Lady Di — don'cha love her?"Hooray! Hooray!' The bores and killjoys confined themselves to urging that we should discuss the matter no further, since she was evidently going through a personal crisis and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This may well be true, and may offer the only escape from the slightly awkward situ- ation in which she finds herself, but there seemed little sign of it at that stage. The word 'honkers' rolled back and forth between panel and studio audience with such resonance that by the end of the evening, after one and half hours of it, I had reached a decision (unsupported by the rest of the panel, with Mr Bottomley in par- ticular dissociating himself from it) that the word carried some sort of Freudian echo.

On Sunday, the more intelligent newspa- pers seemed to share my own preoccupa- tion, even if few put it so crudely. An Observer profile asked: 'Has Diana finally flipped? One hesitates to ask it, but is she honkers?'

In the Sunday Telegraph, Anthea Hall developed the paradox which seems to haunt thoughtful people in this country:

The strangest phenomenon has been that through her increasingly unhappy marriage and the almost unbelievable pressure of mounting public interest in every move she made, the Princess of Wales seems to have developed a peculiar steel. .

Is this a wronged and despairing woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Or is this a mischievous and manipulative woman, spoiled, petulant and obsessively vain?

The Sunday Times, with its unpleasant way of referring to Mr Oliver Hoare as 'the adulterer' on the strength of some tittle-tat- tle about a previous relationship, summed up the central question as crudely and as nastily as we would expect from that pack of jackals:

Was Hoare an innocent 'walker' for royalty or an object of adoration for a lonely, besot- ted woman? What exactly was the relation- ship between the princess and the adulterer?

I would like to put the question slightly differently. Is Princess Diana a tease and a manipulator or does she possess that quali- ty in womanhood which as young men we used to call 'sincerity': does she deliver the goods? Does she, in the ghastly language of the new Britain, bonk?

Taki Theodoracopoulos, that great expert in such matters, seems to be in no doubt: 'Women who suffer from bulimia are not interested in sex, only in mind games,' he pronounced in the Sunday Times.

Perhaps he is right. I would hesitate to quarrel with such an authority, although it is my observation that these distressing ill- nesses can affect women in different ways. I prefer to keep an open mind, and continue to be haunted by the words of Nelson Shanks, an American painter who is cur- rently engaged on a portrait of her. He was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph:

I've never seen eyes so brilliant. She's very bright in an intuitive way. She's kind and has not a trace of malevolence in her. I want to get that across.

In case people accuse him of sycophancy, let them read the last paragraph of the interview: Once she asked Mr Shanks: 'Who would you most like to paint in Britain? Present compa- ny excepted, of course.' The artist was forced to confess that one would be Prince Charles. 'She smiled at that, but I explained to her that he's got such wonderful colouring.'

The great question remains: is she a mad, sexless, manipulative monster or is she a sincere woman? If the former, it is time to put her in the dustbin and forget about her. If the latter — if she is sincere and delivers the goods to whatever man or assortment of men she chooses — I am prepared to love her unconditionally and will be happy to die for her if the need arises. The trouble is, I will probably never know the answer.