The man the royals love to hate
So what HAS the BBC’s Nicholas Witchell done to upset them so much?
USUALLy you can hardly stop a chap talking proudly about his newborn, so there was understandable puzzlement — and huge disappointment — when Prince William whisked Kate and daughter Charlotte away from St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, last Saturday without saying a word.
The world’s media were assembled, microphones at the ready, expecting the prince to share his happiness with a few wellchosen words. But he said nothing.
And now, it seems, we know why. According to the Mail’s ephraim Hardcastle, William refused to speak because the BBC’s veteran royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell was present.
William appears to have adopted his father’s dislike of Witchell, which emerged ten years ago in a muttered comment on the ski slopes of Klosters unintentionally picked up by a boom microphone.
It was a few days before Prince Charles was to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, and Witchell asked a question directed at William and Harry about how they felt about their father’s impending nuptials.
Under his breath, but loud enough to be recorded, Charles grated to his sons: ‘Bloody people. I can’t bear that man. I mean, he’s so awful, he really is.’
Initially, no one knew of Charles’s bitter words. They were only discovered later in the day by an astonished sound-recordist and gleefully made public. Since then, the prince’s words have been replayed time and time again.
Ironically, Witchell’s innocuous question had been agreed beforehand with Clarence House officials. even so, Charles did not like the tone of the reporter’s shouted question, to which William responded that he was looking forward to a ‘great day’ and hoped he didn’t lose the rings.
So what could have made the Prince of Wales so sour towards one of the Corporation’s most respected correspondents, that his ire seems to have jumped a generation down to his son?
Friends of the Prince of Wales say the trigger goes back to 2000 and a report by the red- haired former Six O’clock News presenter about a planned trip to the greek Islands by Charles and Camilla.
WITCHeLL, who had been appointed royal correspondent two years earlier, drew parallels between that holiday and the exotic vacations of edward VIII and his mistress Mrs Simpson. ‘The prince was absolutely furious for the BBC to make such a comparison,’ recalls a senior royal aide. ‘ He was shouting and complaining, particularly upset that the Queen had seen Witchell’s broadcast, too.’
It would not have helped that Charles had discovered that Witchell had been instrumental, while he was working on BBC TV’s Panorama in 1995, in helping to set up Martin Bashir’s incendiary interview with Princess Diana. Indeed, the prince learned from this newspaper that the original plan was for Witchell to be the interviewer, and he had not done it only because he had been promoted to diplomatic correspondent before it could take place.
But it did not end there. In 2002, when Charles’s aunt Princess Margaret, of whom he was very fond, died, Witchell ruffled royal feathers again. In a warts-and-all Radio 4 obituary of the Queen’s sister, Witchell described her ‘copious consumption of whisky’.
The former law graduate from Leeds University also forensically guided listeners through the minutiae of her life and lovers. To make matters even worse, he described the princess as having ‘indulged her royal privileges’.
No one could say that his report was not factual and accurate, yet Charles raged that it was disgraceful for the national broadcaster to have dumbed down and abandoned traditional respect in that way.
That year also saw the Queen Mother’s death and Witchell covering her funeral. During the coverage, he crassly described to the television audience how people were ‘chatting and laughing’ before going on to add: ‘It’s clearly a solemn occasion.’
If 2002 was a bad year for the Royal Family, it was certainly also one for Witchell for it also produced another on- screen gaffe when, positioned for the BBC cameras in front of Buckingham Palace to report on Prince Harry’s dabble with drugs, the reporter mistakenly referred to ‘cocaine’ (a Class A drug) instead of cannabis — although he quickly corrected himself.
The long-running saga of Witchell’s discomfort has provided his professional colleagues with years of amusement. He is known within the Corporation as ‘ Odd Job’ because of the many posts the former graduate trainee has held (he has worked in Northern Ireland, Beirut and Baghdad and for five years was the main presenter on Breakfast News). One newsroom colleague wrote a 70-stanza poem about his ‘ tiny, freckled friend’ entitled ‘The Fortunes of a Carrot’.
Not so funny for the BBC is the fact that many royal scoops have gone to rival networks which some blame on Witchell’s unpopularity with the Royal Family.
When, a few days after the Klosters episode, access to Camilla’s friends for a television documentary about her was given to ITV, there was talk of Charles bypassing the BBC to ‘exact revenge’.
Some of Camilla’s best friends were wheeled out to ‘bat for her cause’ and put her in a positive light; something Charles may have feared the BBC could not be trusted to do.
Prince Harry’s 21st birthday interview is another event which, in years gone by, would automatically have gone to the BBC.
The interview, broadcast around the world, went, rather surprisingly, to Sky, with its then royal correspondent Katherine Witty asking the questions. Clarence House denied snubbing the BBC.
THe BIG one was William and Kate’s engagement interview. Again, the expectant BBC was overlooked. Instead, the scoop was handed to ITV’s political editor Tom Bradby, who had befriended the Prince and his brother while he was Witchell’s opposite number as royal correspondent for the network.
It is pretty harsh on Nicholas Witchell to be blamed for missing these significant opportunities; there is certainly a lack of hard evidence, but even the royals have had to accept in recent years, often with some bitterness, that Prince Charles wields considerable influence and likes to exercise it.
Witchell has worked for the BBC since 1976 and is now 61. Until the Klosters incident, his main claim to fame was sitting on a writhing lesbian during a protest invasion of the BBC’s Six O’Clock News studio in 1988. The screaming intruders were protesting against Section 28 of the Local government Act, which banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities.
One chained herself to fellow newsreader Sue Lawley’s desk, but the resourceful Witchell sat on the woman and tried to keep his hand over her mouth as the programme went on.
He remains ‘ bewildered’ that Charles dislikes him so much. He sees himself as having done nothing more than his job as a broadcaster, giving the facts clearly and without bias to the public.
Shropshire- born Witchell, it seems, has not been so direct and open with his family. Just the other week it emerged he had quietly married a woman 15 years his junior without telling his two daughters who live with his former partner, jewellery designer Carolyn Stephenson, from whom he split in 2000.
To his credit, he joins in the fun still generated at his expense among BBC colleagues over Prince Charles’s Klosters meltdown.
Meanwhile, he remains the Corporation’s royal correspondent, a post he has held for 17 years. Three of these were as deputy to Jennie Bond, who has moved on to the reality TV circuit.
‘Jennie and I are the BBC’s royal pantomime horse,’ said Witchell when they worked together. ‘I am the rear end.’