Lilith
11-09-2002, 10:07 AM
So Diana sent her butler to buy naughty mags for William. Big mistake, says Jim White
Wednesday November 6, 2002
The Guardian
The Daily Mirror has just paid £300,000 to Paul Burrell in return for the royal butler revealing details of his career in domestic service. As anyone who has read the transcripts of Burrell's recent trial will know, this is money wasted. Thanks to evidence presented to the jury, we already know a detail of the Princess of Wales's domestic arrangements so private, so unexpected, so bizarre, you wonder what can be left to come out.
Nothing to do with Camilla Parker Bowles or Major Hewitt, eating disorders or suicide attempts; much more revealing than that ... we learn that Burrell was asked by his employer to buy pornographic magazines for Prince William.
Now it is out, what a fabulous snapshot this gives of the Queen of Hearts' approach to parenting. We always knew she was anxious that her boys should not be sheltered, as their forebears were, from every aspect of real life. She insisted on mainstream schooling (and compared to some of the institutions where previous royals were educated, Eton is your bog-standard comp). She took them to theme parks. She fluttered her eyelashes at usherettes to get them into movies which they were not yet old enough to see.
And now, we discover, she sent her man out to the local newsagent's to purchase jazz mags. Which suggests she was more thorough than the rest of us: frankly, how to engage my children with pornography has never been high on my parenting agenda. Still, if the boy's father had ever found out, she could have argued she was merely following protocol. After all, the story goes that Charles himself celebrated his 18th birthday in the intimate company of a courtesan chosen for her skill at relieving royalty of their heavy burden. The top-shelf smut was a junior version of such droit du seigneur, an onanistic apprenticeship for the duty Diana's boy would soon have to face.
Except that, for all her admirable motives, Diana got it wrong when she dispatched Burrell to transact the business. For adolescent boys, it is not the viewing (or indeed the handling) of a porn magazine that marks an important passage into manhood. It is the buying. Personally, I was never up to the task. Nor were many in my circle. For us, porn arrived, somewhat thumbed and tatty, from the ether. Pages torn from magazines were handed round the bus on the way to school and studied with more scholarly attention than any textbook, but nobody knew where they came from. And, on our bus at least, it is unlikely the source was anyone's butler.
A friend once found a pile of such material in the garden shed, and it was duly handed round in democratic manner. But since he had not yet got his head round the idea of his parents having any interest in sex, he could not entertain the idea of his father enjoying the solo pursuit. He assumed they had been left there by a previous shed owner.
Crucially, also, an interest in pornography is not something the teenage boy is anxious to share with his family. Even in the most liberal households, where drink and drugs and relationships are easy subjects of cross-generational conversation, intimate knowledge of magazines read one-handed is not a convivial topic. Another mate of mine once found himself in possession of a magazine, which he carefully stowed under his mattress for later use. Imagine his disappointment, when, in a fever of anticipation, he opened it one night to discover the centre spread had been removed. The thieves turned out to be his twin brothers, who, having set up a stall outside the school toilets, were charging fellow pupils by-the-minute rental of the material. Imagine his fury, on realising that his usual sanction of telling his parents, when dealing with his brothers' behaviour, was not, here, remotely appropriate.
Only think, though, of his distress were he to have discovered that his mum was responsible for supplying the magazine. His moral compass, his entire world view even, would have been sent haywire in an instant.
The problem is that most teenage boys wouldn't want to wear the shoes their mums buy them, let alone read the porn mags they pay for. Diana's attempt at being modern and liberated was poignant, but her gesture was fatally flawed. The whole point of adolescent male sexuality is that, as with an infatuation with video games, joy-sticks are best engaged guiltily, furtively and preferably in the privacy of the bedroom. Given the princess's own shenanigans with lovers smuggled in car boots, you'd have thought she'd have appreciated this of all truths: take away the illicitness and you take away the thrill.
Wednesday November 6, 2002
The Guardian
The Daily Mirror has just paid £300,000 to Paul Burrell in return for the royal butler revealing details of his career in domestic service. As anyone who has read the transcripts of Burrell's recent trial will know, this is money wasted. Thanks to evidence presented to the jury, we already know a detail of the Princess of Wales's domestic arrangements so private, so unexpected, so bizarre, you wonder what can be left to come out.
Nothing to do with Camilla Parker Bowles or Major Hewitt, eating disorders or suicide attempts; much more revealing than that ... we learn that Burrell was asked by his employer to buy pornographic magazines for Prince William.
Now it is out, what a fabulous snapshot this gives of the Queen of Hearts' approach to parenting. We always knew she was anxious that her boys should not be sheltered, as their forebears were, from every aspect of real life. She insisted on mainstream schooling (and compared to some of the institutions where previous royals were educated, Eton is your bog-standard comp). She took them to theme parks. She fluttered her eyelashes at usherettes to get them into movies which they were not yet old enough to see.
And now, we discover, she sent her man out to the local newsagent's to purchase jazz mags. Which suggests she was more thorough than the rest of us: frankly, how to engage my children with pornography has never been high on my parenting agenda. Still, if the boy's father had ever found out, she could have argued she was merely following protocol. After all, the story goes that Charles himself celebrated his 18th birthday in the intimate company of a courtesan chosen for her skill at relieving royalty of their heavy burden. The top-shelf smut was a junior version of such droit du seigneur, an onanistic apprenticeship for the duty Diana's boy would soon have to face.
Except that, for all her admirable motives, Diana got it wrong when she dispatched Burrell to transact the business. For adolescent boys, it is not the viewing (or indeed the handling) of a porn magazine that marks an important passage into manhood. It is the buying. Personally, I was never up to the task. Nor were many in my circle. For us, porn arrived, somewhat thumbed and tatty, from the ether. Pages torn from magazines were handed round the bus on the way to school and studied with more scholarly attention than any textbook, but nobody knew where they came from. And, on our bus at least, it is unlikely the source was anyone's butler.
A friend once found a pile of such material in the garden shed, and it was duly handed round in democratic manner. But since he had not yet got his head round the idea of his parents having any interest in sex, he could not entertain the idea of his father enjoying the solo pursuit. He assumed they had been left there by a previous shed owner.
Crucially, also, an interest in pornography is not something the teenage boy is anxious to share with his family. Even in the most liberal households, where drink and drugs and relationships are easy subjects of cross-generational conversation, intimate knowledge of magazines read one-handed is not a convivial topic. Another mate of mine once found himself in possession of a magazine, which he carefully stowed under his mattress for later use. Imagine his disappointment, when, in a fever of anticipation, he opened it one night to discover the centre spread had been removed. The thieves turned out to be his twin brothers, who, having set up a stall outside the school toilets, were charging fellow pupils by-the-minute rental of the material. Imagine his fury, on realising that his usual sanction of telling his parents, when dealing with his brothers' behaviour, was not, here, remotely appropriate.
Only think, though, of his distress were he to have discovered that his mum was responsible for supplying the magazine. His moral compass, his entire world view even, would have been sent haywire in an instant.
The problem is that most teenage boys wouldn't want to wear the shoes their mums buy them, let alone read the porn mags they pay for. Diana's attempt at being modern and liberated was poignant, but her gesture was fatally flawed. The whole point of adolescent male sexuality is that, as with an infatuation with video games, joy-sticks are best engaged guiltily, furtively and preferably in the privacy of the bedroom. Given the princess's own shenanigans with lovers smuggled in car boots, you'd have thought she'd have appreciated this of all truths: take away the illicitness and you take away the thrill.