Amanda Platell and Prince Harry

Maybe I’m just a simple-minded, naïve idealist but articles that appear in the Daily Mail continue to shock me. I read it occasionally, for a laugh really, but it normally ends up infuriating me immensely.

When it comes to the sheer nastiness of journalistic output, Amanda Platell has got to be up there with the worst offenders. She really is a twisted, bigoted, vile human being. Her piece on Prince Harry may not be worst crime against humanity she has committed to newsprint over the years, but I still found it pretty amazing.

“At the time (when Harry was being quite the scamp in his ‘wild’ younger days-RTM), his bingeing became legendary as he was spotted spilling out of upmarket nightclubs such as Boujis in the small hours, hardly able to stand and usually propped up by his round-the-clock protection officers or another leggy, double-barrelled blonde whom he’d picked up.

At least he was partying with his own kind then and his friends made sure they always put a steel ring of protection around him…….

…….What a difference a week makes. One moment he’s carrying the baton for the next generation of royals, and now he’s behaving like an overpaid, over-sexed, chav footballer.”

I must confess to being quite bewildered by the excitement that a few ‘naked’ pictures of Prince Harry with an unknown woman in Las Vegas have managed to generate. But it has created quite the media frenzy and bizarrely the Sun has even tried to make it an issue of press freedom. Platell seems to think the whole episode is of the utmost gravity though:

“this was more the world of soft-porn films than the behaviour expected of the Queen’s grandson.”

Yes. Harry in the buff. It’s like the last days of Rome.   

But according to Platell Harry’s real mistake has been to run around with people who aren’t of aristocratic descent and act like a ghastly working class oik.

(I think it’s interesting that Platell chooses to compare him to “chav footballers” and not rugby players, whose boozy antics at last year’s World Cup were not exactly a million miles away from Harry’s this week. But I suppose footballers are not sufficiently blue-blooded to get away with it, are they……..)

Anything that brings the Royal Family into discredit is naturally fine by me but why is everyone so shocked (and I know, most of them aren’t really shocked) that Harry likes cavorting with attractive young women? After all he’s spent years doing it and always has plenty of time and money on his hands.

Is it ok when he does it with “his own kind” (an offensive choice of words on so many levels Amanda) but not when it’s with – gasp – mere mortals?

The Royal Family has been popular when it has been able to maintain a sense of mystique around it. When people see them as other-worldly and somehow above the fray. They had lost it up until the death of Diana and as such were in serious trouble, but managed to get it back in a brilliantly conceived PR campaign. It seems like an eternity ago that mercilessly mocking the Royal Family was considered mainstream but it actually wasn’t.

When they are exposed as partiers, shaggers and ‘wastrels’ (Platell’s term) that mystique fades somewhat (as was the case in the 80s and 90s). They look like a version of the rest of us, just with loads more money, i.e. the truth.

And we can’t have that. And Amanda Platell certainly can’t have that.

Because then people might start to question why they behave like that. Even start to question why we have a Royal Family when are they are so……normal, and as flawed as the rest of us.

That’s what Platell is really angry about. Overpaid, over-sexed, “chav” footballers have rather more in common with overpaid, over-sexed Royals than she dare admit and she doesn’t like being reminded of it.

I suppose that’s the joy of the naked human form. We find out that we are all quite similar.

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