Fleet Street’s upskirting secret

Upskirting is such a pretty word: it sounds like a charming village in Yorkshire, or an olde worlde custom, like swan-upping. Actually, it is nasty, and not as new as people claim. Fragonard depicts it in ‘The Swing’ (though obviously the young man had no camera). Margaret Thatcher, who was most reluctant to wear trousers, nevertheless did so when she knew she would have to climb a ladder, because she did not trust the photographers. Upskirting has been the raison d’etre of the Sunday Sport ever since it was founded in 1986. In 1993, the Mirror published close-up pictures, taken by a concealed camera, of Diana, Princess of Wales, when working out in a gym. It paid the gym-owner, who had set up the camera, more than £100,000. Mail Online has for many years been pretty much an upskirter’s paradise, except that it usually dispenses with the skirts. The problem has spread, however, because of technology.