You have to be rich and famous before the media give a damn who you are sleeping with Friday June 3,2011 THE pundits who whine that only the rich and famous can afford a superinjunction to protect their private lives become tiresome. You have to be rich and famous before the media give a damn who you are sleeping with. If you are a plasterer’s mate from Peterborough you can have 20 mistresses in combination and the public (and thus the media) will yawn with boredom.
MEN BEHAVING BADLY JUST AREN’T A NOVELTY
By Frederick Forsyth
But there is nothing new about keeping private vices private. I remember when the united media used to connive with the rich and famous.
Take Tom Driberg. First Minister, then Sir Tom, then Lord Driberg, chairman of the Labour Party no less, and when it was in office.
He was not only gay but a relentless predator of young men, prowling the loos of Soho looking for casual sex.
Never denounced? On the contrary, constantly denounced by outraged young men he had tried to “touch”. Did Scotland Yard arrest and charge him? Nope, they used to send a squad car to run him home. The entire press knew but not a word leaked out.
Then Bob Boothby. First Minister, then Sir Robert, then Lord Boothby. Had a decades-long affair with Lady Dorothy Macmillan whose husband Harold happened to be the prime minister from 1956 to 1963. Supermac was utterly humiliated but suffered in silence. Also silent was Fleet Street, which knew perfectly well.
In later years Boothby used to schmooze the Kray twins who provided him with East End rough trade rent boys, another of his tastes. There were pictures of him and the Krays beaming away on the sofa – but not for you, dear public.
The press also knew all about the orgies at Cliveden Manor but it was not until two Jamaicans called Edgecombe and Gordon emptied a revolver into the door of Stephen Ward, an upscale pimp who provided girls for the upper-class pervs, that it all broke open. Even Fleet Street could no longer muffle itself.
The upshot was a staggering rumour mill of which poor old Macmillan (again) seemed unaware and then war minister John Profumo rose in the Commons to say he had never slept with a certain Christine Keeler. The House sat in silence, knowing it was nonsense. Then the dam gave way and it all flooded out. But it had been going on for years – by which I mean vice in high places.
And Profumo was sharing his girlfriend with a Soviet spy to boot! Wow.
But Fleet Street also protected the good guys. Sir Billy Butlin had a long-term mistress but gave pots to charity and the press kept quiet in deference to his niceness.
Would we do that nowadays? Well obviously not. Now the slightest slip off the extremely straight and narrow path and the “celeb’s” private life is ripped to pieces.
So they try to cover it up with a court order. But too late. The internet has made secrecy obsolete.
Actually I liked the old Duke of Wellington’s attitude.
Approached by a slimeball murmuring that a certain lady might publish all but could be dissuaded by a bag of gold sovereigns he snapped: “Publish and be damned” and walked on. Now that has a certain style. No fat lawyers getting fatter off the Iron Duke. Not much has changed, you know.
The high and the mighty still misbehave behind closed doors. But so do the lowly and obscure. All that has changed is that the media don’t practise self-censorship any more. And the lowly and obscure do not interest you… or them.
You don’t have to be mad to work as a judge … but it helps
Do you have to pass an insanity test to become a British judge or will mere obtuseness do? In a single week let me offer four examples of the loony-tunes judgments being handed down by M’Lud nowadays.
A Tunisian fanatic adjudged one of the most dangerous terrorists in Europe has been accepted into the UK and cannot be deported back to Italy where he is wanted.
Named only as MK, it is held by our Appeal Courts that his human rights (them again) would be affronted if he were chucked out. But under the European Arrest Warrant a Brit will be handed over without evidence or appeal to anyone in the EU.
Sharon Shoesmith, formerly head of children’s services at Haringey Council, the useless articles who presided over the tragedy of Baby P, should not have been fired as she was says Lord Justice Kay.
This despite one of the most coruscating denunciations ever issued by Ofsted, which did a lengthy investigation and concluded years of incompetence and negligence.
A burglar has been released from jail because his children were missing him and this impugned their human rights.
So that’s all right. If you want to be a burglar and get caught be sure to have a few offspring and Mr Justice Maddison will see you right.
An Austrian count, wrongly detained in jail for three days, has been awarded £400,000 of our money. He concedes in Austria the rate would have been £30-£50 per day. But this was much worse.
The prison-issue underpants offended his human rights and they gave him no comb for his bald head. The chairman of the tribunal that made the award is of course anonymous.
(By the by, a soldier losing both legs will get well under £400,000).
Cash makes law a joke
In what could be a triumph for British journalism I may have penetrated the defence of Monsieur Dominique Kahn’t-Kwite in that Sofitel penthouse.
Supposing he had contacted an upmarket New York madam and ordered a call girl? With three conditions. She had to be black, dressed as a maid and pretend to resist his advances because he liked it that way. And then the silly chit went to the wrong hotel. The rest, as they say, would be history. It’s all bunkum but this may not be.
Without that young African’s evidence, under oath and torn to pieces by the defence, the DA has no case at all. But, unseen and unnamed so far, she will testify, won’t she?
Well there is such a thing as a trauma-driven amnesia. A terrible thing, loss of memory. But she comes from a desperately poor shanty village in upper Guinea.
I have been in that neck of the woods and poverty there can be utterly demeaning. Just suppose the skies opened and rained a monsoon of large dollar bills… with more to come if… That’s an awful lot of pressure.
Of course that couldn’t happen, could it? Well when money is not an object (and it isn’t) an awful lot can be (and has been) covered up in Africa. Let’s wait and see.
Time to nod off for good
It has not really been EU-fanatic Kenneth Clarke’s week. First he upset most of Britain’s women by describing rape as not all that bad when you get used to it.
(All right that wasn’t quite what he said but close.) Then he fell asleep in the Commons. He trumped that while the American President was talking by
nodding off again and has now been slammed by the Home Secretary for his passion for wrist-slapping sentencing.
He’s over 70 and in full figure looks like something out of The Mikado. He has had a life of brimming pints and smelly cheroots and it’s showing badly. Time to retire and help Mrs Clarke with her patchwork quilts?
Flush out Gaddafi
THE original UN resolution empowered the Nato allies to take measures in Libya to prevent the killing of helpless civilians. Since merely wasting Gaddafi’s tanks did not seem to work our bold lads moved to Cruise, Hellfire and Brimstone missiles.
Now we are trying to catch the old nutter on the karzy with Paveway III deep-penetration bunkerbusting bombs and Apache helicopter gunships.
I’d hate to be Master Muammar if the RAF ever get seriously annoyed with him. We still have a few nukes up at Faslane we haven’t tried yet.
They should save a few civilians – but only in Egypt.
Far from a gentleman
It has long been a tradition that when a man rises to Cabinet office he is known as the Right Honourable Gentleman.
There seems to be one at the moment of whom it can be said he isn’t Right, he isn’t Honourable and he emphatically isn’t a Gentleman. Perhaps we should change the title… or the politician.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
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