busker

Distraught Diana

I'm usually the last to hear scandal of any worth, yet over the weekend my phone burned red hot, my email Inbox bulged to burst with the frantic question, "Had I heard the latest about Princess Di? An abortion, no less."

Well yes, actually I had caught wind of it, back in May 1998 when the write-up on Amazon.com about the St. Martin's Press edition of Lady Campbell's gossipy tell-all included the breathless tidbit that, "Lady Di had an abortion while married to Prince Charles because the child she carried wasn't his baby."

Even the Amazon UK entry for the January 1999 British paperback edition includes customer reviews that refer to Campbell's bringing up the abortion, albeit alleged at the time. But since when have mere supporting facts ever held back a good story?

On the other hand, there's something distinctly fishy about the way the world's press are treating it as a brand new story. Is it *that* dull a news day? I fear not. Usually something this old hat is dismissed and we move on; Heaven knows there's enough to movce on TO.


The only good thing about the American media getting on this rusty gravy train is that NBC's tantalising Ann Curry comes out from behind the 'Today' newsdesk and trots off to London to do one of those furrowed-browed 'live' reports, dolled up to the nones and with familiar Central London in the background.

Quel femme: she so straight and clearly the real thing and that Matt and Couric duo bogus as they come.

Speaking of Campbell's book being old hat, check out some of the customer reviews, particularly the comic waspish reference to Lady Campbell having forgotten to airbrush out her prominent Adam's Apple as showing on the book's cover photo.

I met La Campbell once at a London publishing rave and was immediately regaled with the lowdown on her "birth defect", as she calls it: if I remember correctly, "she" used to be a rather handsome lad of dusky hue, "born under sunnier skies", as Noël Coward once put it, until she underwent a sex change and proceeded to wed the aristo Lord Colin Campbell, hence her title by marriage.

Don't say this blog doesn't keep you better informed than you actually care to be ....