speaker’s corner

‘QUEEN Elizabeth was seen snoozing in the back of her car. Is she getting too old for the job? Buckingham Palace is silent on the issue.” – report.

The royals have been quiet of late. I can’t blame them. They cannot win against the tabloids.

A thoroughly unreliable source told me of an incident where a British tabloid used a picture of the queen with Bill Clinton when he was the United States’ president. The photograph showed the top button of her high-necked dinner gown was undone. One could almost see the base of her neck.

The newspaper posed the question: was the queen aware that her button was undone? Was she – bearing in mind Bill Clinton’s reputation – trying to be provocative?

The palace was already reeling from a current series on BBC which was lampooning the royals using genuine newsreel footage of then family and its activities but with bogus voices superimposed. This was at that time when a replay of the soap opera, Dallas, was running. The royalty series was called Pallas, alluding, of course, to Buckingham “Pallas”.

Whenever Princess Anne appeared in the series she was telling some cameraman to “Naff off !” When she wasn’t saying, “Naff off !” she was falling off a horse.

Prince Charles, who has broken a couple of bones falling off polo ponies, was seen being helped on to a pony by his groom and falling off on the other side. When he eventually gets into the saddle the groom says cheerfully: “See you in ’orspital, Sir.”

Anyway the palace’s new and inexperienced deputy spokesman, Cadwallada Effington-Spry, responded to the “Bill and Liz” story with a communiqué, saying the caption to the picture was “unspeakably mischievous”. It went on: “The photograph was taken after an informal Buckingham Palace dinner party when Her Majesty and His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, and the US president, Mr Bill Clinton, and Mrs Clinton, decided to play a little rummy before going to bed.”

Later the palace sent out a correction: “the words ‘before going to bed’ should read ‘before retiring for the night’.”

On the heels of that came a further correction: “For ‘rummy’ please read ‘rubber of bridge’.” Later a further correction: “Please eliminate the word ‘rubber’.”

Hardly had the “Liz and Bill” furore died down when another tabloid, using a spy plane, took a picture from 50 000ft showing somebody remarkably like Prince Philip apparently embracing a well-endowed former actress and model, Marlene Twaddle. Ms Twaddle, it was said, was the niece, once removed, of Lord Blundering who headed the standing committee on seating in the House of Lords. Indeed, it was the same Ms Twaddle who, in 1990, was said to have been involved with Prince Andrew after the two had met at Blundering’s firm which bottled gherkins by Royal Appointment.

Later, the palace explained that the picture had been taken when HRH Prince Philip had chivalrously helped remove a mark from the front of Ms Twaddle’s T-shirt which bore the words SAVE THE BADGERS. The mark made it look like SAVE THE BUGGERS.

The Sun published a picture of the busty Ms Twaddle, her front superimposed with the words SAVE THE BADGERS. It questioned the duke’s explanation and drew a circle around Ms Twaddle’s left breast in order to show that the mark would have been near the middle of it and could not have affected the letter A in “badgers” .

A palace statement said the mark had been at the right of Ms Twaddle’s bosom and not on any one side. Later came a correction saying that the word “bosom” should read “front”.

It also pointed out that Ms Twaddle was Lord Blundering’s niece twice removed and not, as had been stated, once removed.

(Look, don’t quote me on any of this.)