It’s an uneasy relationship, as any Fleet Street photographer will tell you. One minute Prince William and family want to be left alone, the next they’re on a new charm campaign backing good causes. There’s no settled view of where their privacy begins and ends.
Which brings us to the flip-flop being played out in a Nanterre courtroom as the Prince sues a celebrity magazine that, five years ago, took some long-lens snaps of Kate topless in a “secluded villa” - and demands a “punitive” £1.3m in damages (plus £42,000 from a local Provence paper that didn’t do topless).
William talks of his “pain” and “shock”, plus “the humiliation heaped on his wife”. What he doesn’t explain, though, is why it’s necessary to revive all that pain and angst half a decade later – especially since, quite clinically, no French court is going to award him more than a (perhaps humiliating) fraction of the damages he seeks.
A future monarch needs a better legal advice team. Or maybe just have a word with the Duke of Edinburgh before he goes.
• So the best commercial prize for British backbone goes to ITV. Maybe the Strong-and-Stable One is too busy to debate with other party leaders. Maybe Jeremy Corbyn won’t turn up if she’s not there. But at least – come 18 May – Julie Etchingham and an audience will have the other leadership hopefuls together and on air.
It’s an important point of principle, especially after France’s climactic two-hour contest – four times the length of the average Panorama, please note – between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. Viewers want some kind of national moment. They need to see contacts dictated to suit them, rather than meddling tribes of spin doctors. They will, perhaps, feel just a little disillusionment about a national leader too terse and lofty to talk to them direct. Now over to the BBC … ? Your turn to be brave.
