Tabloids show Charles, Camilla no mercy

Romance is in the air this week as Prince Charles prepares to marry his long-time paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles, but there is no love lost between the royal family and Britain’s irreverent tabloids.

In a far cry from the sycophancy of bygone days, newspapers have delighted in reporting a series of mishaps that have befallen the wedding plans. One tabloid even published an altered front-page photo depicting the bride-to-be as a horse.

“Wedding switch forces Chas’ old nag to miss the big race,” the Daily Star red-top — as all Britain’s tabloids are known for their colorful banners — wrote about a scheduling conflict, now resolved, between the wedding and the Grand National horse race.

The Star covered the first news of the wedding under the headline “Boring Old Gits to Wed.” "Git" is a British term for an undesirable person.

The Daily Mail weighed in with “Can Anything Else Possibly Go Wrong?” after Pope John Paul’s funeral forced a rescheduling of the marriage. Others also have taken their shots, with the top-selling Sun proclaiming: “JINXED: Queen’s despair at Charles’s curse.”

Opinion polls show that most Britons do not want Camilla to be queen. Many blame her for breaking up the marriage between Charles and Princess Diana, who was so loved by the tabloids for her ability to boost profits that she was known as the Princess of Sales.

Dependence and loathing
With pop culture increasingly focused on celebrity gossip, the royals have not been immune.

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“Our tabloid media is as much about entertainment as it is about news,” said Charles Anson, former spokesman for the queen. “Even though it’s been vituperative at times, the coverage can occasionally be fantastic for such events as the Golden Jubilee,” he added, referring to the 50th anniversary celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in 2002.

Charles and Camilla’s wedding is the latest chapter in a decades-old story of mutual dependence and loathing between the Windsors and the British press.

At the best of times, royals like Diana could rely on British newspapers for image-burnishing coverage, and the tabloids who fed the public’s insatiable hunger for royal news were rewarded with increased readership.

Fleet Street treated the monarchy with reverence for decades, but both camps point a finger at the arrival of Australian-American media baron Rupert Murdoch for the acrimonious relationship that exists now.

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'Ordinary human beings'
Murdoch bought the Sun in 1969 and relaunched it as a gossip and celebrity sheet, giving royal correspondent Harry Arnold orders to dish dirt, not extol.

“I think Rupert, being colonial, didn’t want to kowtow to the royal family ... and so I think his instruction through the editor was: ’look, stop worshipping these people, stop treating them as gods. They’re ordinary human beings and they will help sell newspapers,’” Arnold told U.S. public broadcaster PBS.

David Yelland, who was employed by Murdoch for 14 years, edited the Sun for five years and now works in public relations, dismissed news-stand sales as the primary motive behind the harsh treatment of the royals by the press.

“People often say it’s because it sells newspapers, and to that I say ’show me a newspaper that’s increased sales in the last five years,’” Yelland said.

Those 'Bloody people'
He argued the continental European press have been far harder on the House of Windsor than British journalists, pointing to the informal agreement by local newspapers to restrain their photographers while Princes William and Harry attended top school Eton, even as overseas paparazzi snapped away.

Despite an avowed apathy from the British public about the the Charles and Camilla nuptials, the event has been rife with missteps too farcical for the tabloids to ignore.

Red-faced courtiers were forced to switch the venue after a marriage license mix-up and Charles’ mum, Queen Elizabeth, said she would not attend the event.

After more than a month of merciless coverage leading up to the wedding, Charles has few kind feelings for the press. At a question and answer session last week, microphones picked up his muttered aside referring to reporters as those “bloody people” and a BBC correspondent as “that awful man.”