When In Doubt, Run the Royals

By Laurence Zuckerman

Diana, Princess of Wales, turned 26 last week. She celebrated in a private room at a London restaurant with Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and his wife. The British tabloids, however, toasted Diana's birthday in a very different way. WHAT HAPPENS IF CHARLES AND DI DIVORCE? bannered the sensationalist Sun across a two-page spread. "It's unthinkable," noted the paper in considerably smaller type. "But anything goes with the royals these days." Declared the rival Daily Express: "She's 26 today, far from shy and surrounded by Hip Hoorays who dance and joke with her till dawn."

The royal family has never lacked for ink in the British press, especially ! in the flashier tabloids whose rival scoops are sometimes mountains built from one grain of fact. Diana, in particular, attracts headlines: over the course of her six-year marriage to Prince Charles, she has been reported pregnant countless times, has spent a king's ransom on clothes and was anorexic. Lately, however, British papers have been feasting on an unusually large banquet of negative stories about the younger royals, including once unthinkable innuendos about (gasp!) Diana's marital fidelity.

Rumors of a rift between the pensive, polo-loving Charles, 38, and his much younger, more pop-oriented wife have been played up in the papers for months. After spotting Di at rock concerts and discos with a number of male escorts, reporters zeroed in on a single putative love interest: Philip Dunne, 28, a London bachelor who works at the investment banking firm of S.G. Warburg. Never mind that Dunne already has a pretty girlfriend named Katya Grenfell. Young, successful and with a vague resemblance to Actor Christopher Reeve (Superman), Dunne fit the role perfectly. POW! SUPERMAN PHIL IS DIANA'S NEW PAL blared the News of the World.

In true British tabloid style, no detail was spared. Several papers gleefully reported how Dunne and the princess danced until dawn at a wedding after Charles had left. Nigel Dempster, the country's leading gossip columnist, informed readers of the Daily Mail on Sunday that Di spent the weekend with Dunne and other guests at his family's country home while both his parents and Charles were away. When Diana was photographed at a David Bowie concert next to a handsome man, several papers trumpeted that it was Dunne. It was not; Di's companion turned out to be an officer in the Queen's Household Cavalry. The mistake did not deter at least one paper from offering some friendly advice. "Have an early night, Diana," urged a Star columnist. "We really can't have a Princess of Wales hoofing it around town with a clutch of eligible escorts, while her two small children are left at home with their dad."

Palace correspondents claim that Diana has shed her early shyness and credit her new high spirit to her sister-in-law the Duchess of York, formerly Sarah Ferguson and known in headlines simply as "Fergie." Already 26 when she married Charles' younger brother Prince Andrew last year, Fergie arrived at Buckingham Palace with a large circle of partygoing friends and a relaxed, fun-loving demeanor. Di and Fergie made the papers at the annual Ascot races last month when, giggling, they prodded acquaintances from behind with their umbrellas. Later, when Princess Michael of Kent walked by, Diana reportedly greeted her with a wolf whistle.

Such antics would attract notice anyway, but some observers believe that last month's departure of Palace Spokesman Michael Shea has worsened the royal family's public relations problem. Shea, who held the job for almost ten years, knew how to subdue a potentially embarrassing story and treated reporters well. His skills would have come in handy three weeks ago when the Queen's youngest son Edward organized a charity event in which he, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Fergie dressed in Elizabethan garb and raucously led teams in mock medieval jousts. Reporters were kept in a tent for six hours and forced to watch the proceedings on a video screen. At a press conference afterward, Edward was met with a decided lack of enthusiasm and stormed out, giving the papers their royals story for the day.

Part of the point of the program, Edward said innocently before fleeing, was to show the public that "members of the royal family are, in reality, ordinary human beings." Some commoners, however, have different ideas. "What keeps the royal family royal is the general suspension of disbelief that they are mere mortals," wrote Helen Mason in the Sunday Times. Without that disbelief, the monarchy might lose its appeal, and where would that leave the British press?

With reporting by Roland Flamini/London