Pretty classless sod, providing the tabloids with steamy details like that. Somebody needs to bastardslap that guy. We now know exactly what his word is worth.
The tabloids have just turned on him because they didn’t get his story. “If we can’t have you, we’ll try to destroy you,” is the impression I get. Mind you, romping with Barrymore certainly appears to be a lapse in taste and judgement…
I seriously think this scandal could destroy the house of Windsor. According to an anonymouse Palace aide talking to the Observer, there’s a whole load more shit still to come out, and “it’s a fucking mess”.
He’s actually given away very little in terms of juicy gossip. He’s remained protective of both Princess Diana and the Queen. He’s confirmed a few things about the Spencers, which were fairly obvious i.e. they are not nice people who didn’t really want to help her in life, but have been happy to cash in on her death.
It’s not unreasonably for him to want to answer the charges against him, which were instigated by the Spencers and seized on eagerly by some overabitious copper. All the tabloids wanted his story. Not selling it to anyone wouldn’t have help - they would have printed what they wanted anyway. He didn’t sell to the highest bidder, but to a paper he trusted, for a sum that would cover his legal fees and make he didn’t have to sell the family home in order to cover them. What is wrong with that?
The Sun prints bollocks, knowing he won’t sue. He couldn’t afford to, and even if he could, they’d get plenty of salacious gossip in court, which of course they’d print. The Sun were never ones for respecting Diana’s privacy, for it to criticise Paul Burrell for basically making some fact public, is simply behaving in the hypocritical way we over this side of the pond have come to expect.
This story is about two aristocratic families fighting each other, and sod anyone else who gets in the way. Despite it all the man remains a royalist. That’s either a mark of extreme loyalty or stupidity, depending on your viewpoint.
BTW, I’m really enjoying the scandal (though not for the people who have suffered), and am looking forward to seeing further shocking revelations, hopefully bringing down the whole institution.
I think what is happening is that the scandal’s beginning to reveal just how out of touch and contemptuous of ordinary people the British royals actually are. The UK ends up in a serious dilemma if they do prove to be rotten to the core (as I suspect they are), since the rule of heredity means they can’t be replaced.
(I am an anti-Monarchist, but not necessarily a Republican [though I think the House of Lords needs to become a Senate], due not to principle, but because the royal family is still so significant to a great number of British people. For this reason I favour a ‘cycling monarchy’ a la Norway, rather than our current overprivileged toffee-nosed gits.)