The Prince and the press

When you’ve seen how much vilification Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles have endured from the tabloids and the republican broadsheets over the years, you wouldn’t have been surprised to see or hear the Prince’s muttered comments about the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell in Klosters last week. Witchell, known inexplicably among his colleagues as the ‘poisoned carrot’, is in fact one of the more respectful of the reporters who follow the royals. But the seemingly innocuous question he threw at the three princes — how were they feeling about the forthcoming wedding — was not as bland as it first appeared. It would have been if addressed only to Charles, but it took on a certain tension with William and Harry expected to answer it.

Witchell knew this and so did Charles, whose patience snapped, though he wasn’t aware his remark would be picked up by the microphones planted in the snow. It appears from what I read that Witchell also has form in the mind of Charles, who is said to disapprove of some of his royal reporting. Such, though, is the conceit of BBC News that it described the incident as a public-relations disaster. For me it was the opposite, and I laughed when I first heard it played on PM and later saw it on television news. Something of the real Charles broke through the artificiality of the wooden and awkward photo call. For the royals, though, there are two BBCs: there is the part of the corporation that maintains good relations with the monarchy and is able to make excellent documentaries such as that currently showing on BBC1, The Queen’s Castle, a fascinating portrayal of everyday life at Windsor Castle (Sundays). And then there is the other BBC: News, which tends to follow up newspaper stories, instinctively feeling that it should report the royals as a newspaper would except for the more lurid tales.