Lennon Saviour of E
15-12-2006, 11:36
A superb piece, after a few very dull weeks, print it off - you deserve it:
'Drink, drugs and rock'n'roll is what she would've wanted'
When the head of RCA Records was told that Elvis Presley had been found dead at his Graceland mansion, he is said to have remarked: "Great career move."
That's rather how I felt when I learned that Lady Di had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
It's easy to forget that at the time of her death, Diana was descending into Norma Desmond territory, living an evanescent existence in the company of a coke-snorting Arab playboy and his Eurotrash acolytes.
The pedestal upon which she had planted her designer standard in her Eighties' glory days had long since crumbled. By 1997, she was about as fashionable as shoulder pads, leg warmers and Bananarama.
After her acrimonious divorce from Prince Charles, Diana announced that she intended to remain an "independent member of the Royal Family".
I remarked at the time that it was a bit like Bianca Jagger claiming to be an independent member of the Rolling Stones.
The Windsors had no further use for her. They treated her as breeding stock and once she had dutifully produced an "heir and a spare" she was discarded.
She was reduced to hanging around St Tropez and the Paris Ritz, like a thinking man's Ivana Trump.
There was a residue of public affection for Diana, but it was largely based on curiosity. Lady Di was a precursor of our modern preoccupation with celebrity.
Had she lived, she would today be jostling for space with Posh Spice and Jade Goody and considering a lucrative offer to join John McCririck and Janet Street-Porter in the bush tucker trial.
So when her drunken chauffeur ploughed her Mercedes into a wall, pursued by foreign paparazzi, it seemed a fitting end.
This was Diana's James Dean moment, her Jim Morrison overdose, her Buddy Holly plane crash. Henri Paul was her very own Mark Chapman. The legend was assured.
Bizarre it was to be alive that August, as the nation descended into a spiral of madness in the wake of the death. Alastair Campbell manipulated the mood with his trademark cynicism.
Who can forget the hilarious trembling lip and watery eye of our new Prime Minister as he hijacked the return of the body?
"She was the People's Princess." Vote for me.
For a few days it was like Euro 96, with flowers. She's coming home, she's coming home, she's coming...
Anyone who dissented from the ruthlessly-enforced mourning was treated like a heretic. One man was beaten up for not showing enough "respect". His crime was to clean his car on the morning of the funeral.
The Royal Family was pilloried and traduced in sections of the Press for not grieving in public. There was an air of real menace. Britain seemed to be teetering on the brink of our Bastille moment.
Diana would have loved every second.
But the moment passed. Once the withered floral tributes were swept away, the vicarious grief subsided as quickly as it had erupted. A year later, there was an attempt to recreate the mood with a Lady Di memorial walk, setting off from Hyde Park. Millions were expected, fewer than a couple of hundred turned up. If wet, in Daphne's.
The nation had, appropriately, "moved on".
Of course, the conspiracy theorists were still howling at the moon. From his grassy knoll in Knightsbridge, Mohammed Fayed led the accusations that Diana had been murdered, that Prince Philip was an M15 agent, that Mossad did it (naturally).
The French investigation knocked all that on the head, but the Phoney Pharoah wouldn't be silenced.
To keep the flame alive, he built a shrine to Diana and his son Dodi in Harrods - a tacky, expensive version of those makeshift, mini mausoleums which sprout at the scene of every fatal road accident and backstreet stabbing. Only the teddy bears are missing.
Di and Dodi are in balletic pose, presumably intended to invoke a pair of love-struck Greek gods making their ethereal progress across the Elysian fields. To be honest, they look more like Morecambe and Wise singing Bring Me Sunshine. Eventually to shut Fayed up, the Government sent for Lord Stevens - aka Captain Beaujolais, the former Scotland Yard showman - and charged him with carrying out the definitive inquiry.
Lines were to be drawn. Fayed described Stevens as a fearless man of integrity who would get at the truth.
Beaujolais was certainly thorough. No stone was left unturned, no Parisian wine list left unexplored. And yesterday, after racking up fees sufficient to keep him in Premier Cru Morgon for decades, the Captain delivered his Olympian report.
There was no conspiracy, Diana wasn't engaged to Dodi, she wasn't pregnant, she wasn't murdered. Henri Paul was out of his head on drink and drugs and crashed at high speed.
Call it £2.5 million for cash. Evenin' all.
Predictably, Fayed won't accept the verdict but the game's up. (If Mighty Mo keeps making a bloody nuisance of himself, maybe Captain Beaujolais should re-open the cash-for-questions case. I never understood why Fayed wasn't prosecuted after admitting bribing MPs.)
Now, all Di's devoted fans can look forward to is a concert commemorating the tenth anniversary of her death, organised by her amazingly well-balanced sons.
It should certainly prove to be a good career move for some of her old favourites, who haven't shifted any product since Live Aid. Bananarama might be prevailed upon to reform for the occasion.
Perhaps Sir Elton of John could rearrange Candle In The Wind yet again, to be sung by a strung-out Potty Pete Doherty, with Captain Beaujolais on banjo and a backing chorus of Aids sufferers and landmine victims, hair by Nicky Clarke, frocks by Donatella Versace.
It's what she would have wanted.
------------------------------------------------------------ ----
This week's entry for the Jo Moore memorial award for burying bad news goes to whoever decided to interview Tony Blair over the cash-for-ermine scandal on the very day the Lady Di inquiry findings were released.
Apparently, the Prime Minister explained that honours were showered on political donors not for their contribution to public service, but in recognition of their support for the Labour Party.
So that's all right, then. And there we were thinking something dodgy was going on.
------------------------------------------------------------ -
The God that is Littlejohn - Daily Mail
'Drink, drugs and rock'n'roll is what she would've wanted'
When the head of RCA Records was told that Elvis Presley had been found dead at his Graceland mansion, he is said to have remarked: "Great career move."
That's rather how I felt when I learned that Lady Di had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
It's easy to forget that at the time of her death, Diana was descending into Norma Desmond territory, living an evanescent existence in the company of a coke-snorting Arab playboy and his Eurotrash acolytes.
The pedestal upon which she had planted her designer standard in her Eighties' glory days had long since crumbled. By 1997, she was about as fashionable as shoulder pads, leg warmers and Bananarama.
After her acrimonious divorce from Prince Charles, Diana announced that she intended to remain an "independent member of the Royal Family".
I remarked at the time that it was a bit like Bianca Jagger claiming to be an independent member of the Rolling Stones.
The Windsors had no further use for her. They treated her as breeding stock and once she had dutifully produced an "heir and a spare" she was discarded.
She was reduced to hanging around St Tropez and the Paris Ritz, like a thinking man's Ivana Trump.
There was a residue of public affection for Diana, but it was largely based on curiosity. Lady Di was a precursor of our modern preoccupation with celebrity.
Had she lived, she would today be jostling for space with Posh Spice and Jade Goody and considering a lucrative offer to join John McCririck and Janet Street-Porter in the bush tucker trial.
So when her drunken chauffeur ploughed her Mercedes into a wall, pursued by foreign paparazzi, it seemed a fitting end.
This was Diana's James Dean moment, her Jim Morrison overdose, her Buddy Holly plane crash. Henri Paul was her very own Mark Chapman. The legend was assured.
Bizarre it was to be alive that August, as the nation descended into a spiral of madness in the wake of the death. Alastair Campbell manipulated the mood with his trademark cynicism.
Who can forget the hilarious trembling lip and watery eye of our new Prime Minister as he hijacked the return of the body?
"She was the People's Princess." Vote for me.
For a few days it was like Euro 96, with flowers. She's coming home, she's coming home, she's coming...
Anyone who dissented from the ruthlessly-enforced mourning was treated like a heretic. One man was beaten up for not showing enough "respect". His crime was to clean his car on the morning of the funeral.
The Royal Family was pilloried and traduced in sections of the Press for not grieving in public. There was an air of real menace. Britain seemed to be teetering on the brink of our Bastille moment.
Diana would have loved every second.
But the moment passed. Once the withered floral tributes were swept away, the vicarious grief subsided as quickly as it had erupted. A year later, there was an attempt to recreate the mood with a Lady Di memorial walk, setting off from Hyde Park. Millions were expected, fewer than a couple of hundred turned up. If wet, in Daphne's.
The nation had, appropriately, "moved on".
Of course, the conspiracy theorists were still howling at the moon. From his grassy knoll in Knightsbridge, Mohammed Fayed led the accusations that Diana had been murdered, that Prince Philip was an M15 agent, that Mossad did it (naturally).
The French investigation knocked all that on the head, but the Phoney Pharoah wouldn't be silenced.
To keep the flame alive, he built a shrine to Diana and his son Dodi in Harrods - a tacky, expensive version of those makeshift, mini mausoleums which sprout at the scene of every fatal road accident and backstreet stabbing. Only the teddy bears are missing.
Di and Dodi are in balletic pose, presumably intended to invoke a pair of love-struck Greek gods making their ethereal progress across the Elysian fields. To be honest, they look more like Morecambe and Wise singing Bring Me Sunshine. Eventually to shut Fayed up, the Government sent for Lord Stevens - aka Captain Beaujolais, the former Scotland Yard showman - and charged him with carrying out the definitive inquiry.
Lines were to be drawn. Fayed described Stevens as a fearless man of integrity who would get at the truth.
Beaujolais was certainly thorough. No stone was left unturned, no Parisian wine list left unexplored. And yesterday, after racking up fees sufficient to keep him in Premier Cru Morgon for decades, the Captain delivered his Olympian report.
There was no conspiracy, Diana wasn't engaged to Dodi, she wasn't pregnant, she wasn't murdered. Henri Paul was out of his head on drink and drugs and crashed at high speed.
Call it £2.5 million for cash. Evenin' all.
Predictably, Fayed won't accept the verdict but the game's up. (If Mighty Mo keeps making a bloody nuisance of himself, maybe Captain Beaujolais should re-open the cash-for-questions case. I never understood why Fayed wasn't prosecuted after admitting bribing MPs.)
Now, all Di's devoted fans can look forward to is a concert commemorating the tenth anniversary of her death, organised by her amazingly well-balanced sons.
It should certainly prove to be a good career move for some of her old favourites, who haven't shifted any product since Live Aid. Bananarama might be prevailed upon to reform for the occasion.
Perhaps Sir Elton of John could rearrange Candle In The Wind yet again, to be sung by a strung-out Potty Pete Doherty, with Captain Beaujolais on banjo and a backing chorus of Aids sufferers and landmine victims, hair by Nicky Clarke, frocks by Donatella Versace.
It's what she would have wanted.
------------------------------------------------------------ ----
This week's entry for the Jo Moore memorial award for burying bad news goes to whoever decided to interview Tony Blair over the cash-for-ermine scandal on the very day the Lady Di inquiry findings were released.
Apparently, the Prime Minister explained that honours were showered on political donors not for their contribution to public service, but in recognition of their support for the Labour Party.
So that's all right, then. And there we were thinking something dodgy was going on.
------------------------------------------------------------ -
The God that is Littlejohn - Daily Mail