 They interrogated me and my editor every day for a week.
First they told us we'd made the whole thing up. When we insisted we hadn't, the nice cop wondered if I'd become enamoured of the girl. I denied it indignantly. The nasty cop told me I was sleeping with her, which I also denied but felt rather good about. The even-handed cop drew even-handedly on his pipe. These were the days of Harold Wilson, when sucking on a pipe denoted even-handed wisdom.
These three glowering heavies made us feel awful. They never quite suggested we were guilty of treason, but they came close to it. It was not as if we had printed any Royal dialogue. They tried to find the identity of the girl, which we refused to reveal. What seemed most to upset them was that we had suggested the state had failed to protect the privacy of the Royal family.
We protested that our newspaper was owned by that staunch patriot Woodrow Wyatt (who was extremely supportive of us throughout). |
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| Our newspaper was owned by that staunch patriot Woodrow Wyatt (who was extremely supportive of us throughout) |
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Meanwhile the story took off, with further wild Fleet Street speculations. Pompous articles in the political weeklies, a Maudie Littlehampton cartoon by Osbert Lancaster in the Daily Express, and an article in an Italian magazine which creatively claimed to have a transcript of a Royal call which went something like this:
QUEEN: Phillip! Where are you?
PHILLIP: I am in Windsor
QUEEN: Why are you not in Buckingham Palace?
PHILLIP: Because I am in Windsor.
It sounded pretty authentic to me.
Anyway, for a brief time we were the hottest story in the land, and then suddenly... nothing. The national press forgot us. The investigators went home. It was all over.
Well, not quite. The investigators eventually produced a report saying that the story was nonsense. Woodrow Wyatt made us say that the investigators were liars, which we dutifully did, but I don't think they noticed.
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 11, 2006
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