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Saturday 30 August 2008

What a boring royal blackmail story

The royal blackmail story is remarkable for the absence of outrage

The gay sex and drugs allegations were met with a huge shrug

(I did, mind, on your behalf. One of the sites not only yielded up the name of the victim but also informed me that Kemal Ataturk’s creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 was a Jewish plot — as indeed was almost everything else of allegedly malign consequence which happened during the 20th century. Including, interestingly, Auschwitz. So, I thought, those are the sort of people who think minor royal misdemeanours are interesting. In fact, the sites which chose to print the name of the royal were either anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist blogs, or bottom-of-the-barrel trash-celeb sites, or supposedly respectable Australian newspapers. In each case a certain agenda was at work.)

The British newspaper editors, meanwhile, just about managed to shout ‘hold the front page’, rather feebly, without great enthusiasm, for a day. After that, the royal gay sex blackmail stuff was booted well and truly inside, even when the papers had got photographs of the men accused of doing the blackmailing. Page one was reserved for our more modern obsession, the McCanns, and another barrage of speculative gibberish (‘Is Maddie hidden in the Moroccan mountains? We haven’t a f—ing clue’), spite and innuendo. Ian Strachan, the floppy-haired, pudding-faced royal hanger-on accused of jointly instigating the blackmail, has clearly set his cap at the wrong sort of royalty — the old royalty, which nobody very much cares about any more. He would have been more handsomely rewarded, perhaps, if he’d hung out with Kate and Gerry, got some mobile phone snaps of them not grieving properly and spending money on food instead of scouring the Atlas mountains with a spade. That would have been page one for several days.

In fact, that’s the really interesting thing about this story — its magnificent lack of impact. It was evident even in the comparatively small sum which the blackmailers reportedly attempted to extort from the House of Windsor in exchange for not publishing the incriminating photographs — £50,000, or just about enough to feed their own coke habits (if they have one) for a few months. And remember, blackmailers have a tendency to overestimate the magnitude of their hold over their chosen victims. And it was evident too in the speed with which the story migrated to the inside pages of our newspapers and in the comparatively candid response from both the police and the royal family. Indeed, it is being suggested right now that the victim may well come clean and spill the beans to the press, so that by the time you read this the name may well be in the legitimate public domain and you won’t have to log on to Letskillallthejews.com.

More articles from: Rod Liddle | this section

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