Big-ot Brother; Prince Harry’s Army; Scrambled Doherty; and Beckham’s Break Down
ROBBERS, burglars and Pete Doherty take note – if you want to avoid arrest best check the Royals’ social diary before going out.
Having already spotted Prince William’s paramour Kate Middleton moving about town in the centre of a cauldron of ten officers of the law, on Monday we caught up with Prince Harry’s lover Chelsy Davy.
“Overstretched police assign eight officers (plus two minders) so Harry and Chelsy can go nightclubbing till 4am in peace,” said the Mail’s headline.
Add to his this phalanx Prince Harry, a young man muddied up and trained to kill by his grandmother the Queen, and Chelsy looked quite safe.
As the Sun noted, Harry, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Blues and Royals, would soon learn if he is to be dispatched to Iraq. If he can handle a night out at London’s Cuckoo Club and run the gauntlet of paparazzi, the frontline should hold no fears.
Harry was not in his Army fatigues; seen dressed “unusually smartly” in pink shirt and jacket. Miss Davy wore a white patterned dress and black stockings. Their entourage wore navy blue jackets, black leather gloves and clip-on ties.
Burglars in smarter parts of central London wore smiles.
Who would take on Harry’s thin-lipped police, with their leather-gloved hands and narrowed eyes? What fool? They look intimidating enough. But what if these guards were armed with guns and gas? What if they were the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité?
It might have happened. Records in the National Archive claimed that 50 years ago French President Guy Mollet requested that France be allowed to join the Commonwealth. Our Queen could have been their Queen. Our Prince Harry, their prince. Their police, our police.
“Monsieur Mollet raised with the Prime Minister the possibility of a union between the UK and France,” said the document, as reported by the Sun. The paper then went on mazy dribble though what might have been.
It saw Thierry Henry, football’s D’Artagnan, clad in a nylon England football shirt. It was a vision shared by the Mirror.
Why Henry should be in an England short and not the colours of Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland did not concern the Mirror as the country’s finest footballer raised his hand to salute a goal and send the crowds watching on a jumbo monitor town in Auxerre into paroxysm of excitement. “Hoorah!” they cried.
And while the French smashed up the town centre and got wasted on industrial strength lager and dayglo alco-vins, the Mirror’s Brain Reade snuggled up to his wife Angelina, “resulting in a mouthful of armpit hair”.
Any union between France and the UK would need to be a two-way street. For Thierry Henry refulgently striking the ball in a German’s onion bag, one anachronistic tabloid writer would have to marry a woman with hairy armpits.
And David Beckham… Always David Beckham. But David is on his way. Beckham’s trasnferred from the bench to the stands at Real Madrid. And wife Victoria was in Los Angeles, hunting for a house for the family to live in.
And Posh was at the Golden Globe Awards. Golden Balls. Golden Globes. The Beckhams’ life is a gilded trophy in the Californian sunshine.
But Posh eschewed the ceremony for the after-show do. Posh has not escaped the British paparazzi to be hounded by foreign snappers. To avoid standing out, Posh accessorised her look with some genuine A-list company. Who would look at Vicky with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes by her side?
But the car carrying Cruise, Holmes and their émigré friend broke down. So Posh got a lift with Jennifer Lopez. If anyone could shield Vicky from prying eyes it was J-Lo, and her backside.
Posh was hiding out in Los Angeles. Helen Mirren was in Los Angeles. Naomi Campbell was in a New York courtroom pleading guilty to an assault charge. The best of British talent was all overseas.
Back here we scratched around for entertainment. And on Thursday we got some.
“This may be the biggest accident you have ever seen,” promised the Mirror. This was the “TV CRASH” you would never forget.
In terms of career-ending moments caught on camera this surpassed the corporate video of Gerald Ratner telling the world the merchandise on sale at his eponymous stores was “crap”.
This exceeded Jade Goody telling Indian babe Shilpa Shetty to “go back to the slums”.
And that video of Saddam Hussein’s final moments… Well, let’s just say it’s a close second.
So massive was this car crash that the Sun featured it on its front page. Above the news of a race war triggered by the aforesaid Goody, readers trembled at: “My hell at 280mph.”
These were the first pictures of Richard ‘Hamster’ Hammond’s car crash. This was what counted for entertainment on British telly – a man nearly dying in a car. And Big Brother.
Goody and her repulsive, bullying little gang of nth-rate singer and painted-face Wag were abusing Shilpa Shetty, all round Asian babe and talent, the embodiment of class, grace and elegance. It was a non-contest.
Three against one was nothing to Shilpa – four if Jade’s drippy lover Jack Tweed (or Tweedy if you read the Sun) waded in.
Shilpa never looked like losing, Jade was out of her depth, a hippo in deep-sea waters. The kindest thing was to put Jade out of her misery.
But how? “Burn the pig,” they chanted when Jade left the Big Brother house in 2004. The funeral pyre was lit. The crowd stood well back.
This was entertainment. Remember, remember the 19th of January, gunpowder, racism and rot.
Posted: 20th, January 2007 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
