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The Queen's boudoir at Buckingham Palace was invaded early one morning by a man who, weirdly, sat on her bed making conversation. Her personal bodyguard resigned after confessing to consorting with a homosexual prostitute. Her Majesty's second son Prince Andrew, 23, flew a helicopter in the Falkland Islands war, then returned to resume a romance with the beauteous Koo, who had appeared nude in such films as Cruel Passion. When the two tried to sneak off to Mustique, the Caribbean hideaway where Princess Margaret had dallied with Pop Singer Roddy Llewellyn a few years ago, they shocked right-thinking Britons. The Queen Mother, 82, is a great favorite of the press and, indeed, of everyone in Britain, and the Queen and Philip are treated with solid respect. But their only daughter Princess Anne, 32, is surly to the press and has earned the nickname "Her Royal Rudeness." She and her husband Captain Mark Phillips were the center of a swirl of divorce rumors, thus far apparently baseless, and she horrified everyone while on her own American tour by refusing to gurgle appreciatively—growl was what she did—over the birth of Sweet William. "Naff off," an upper-class vulgarism, is gaining popularity around the world largely through Anne's efforts.
It was the Princess of Wales, however—Shy Di, the radiant, misty darling of the tabloids—who drew the blackest headlines. Only seven months after William's birth, the Princess was being criticized as a "spoilt brat," a "fiend" and a "monster." Charles was said to be desolate that a divorce was not possible for the future King of England. Diana's spendthrift shopping, reportedly at the rate of some $1,500 a week, supposedly dismayed him. Her increasing thinness, which had seemed enchantingly graceful, was briefly depicted as anorexia nervosa. Then an American psychiatrist warned that Diana, on the basis of a stress evaluation test he had invented, had "an 80% chance" of becoming ill. The press became incensed at her behavior on a skiing holiday with Charles in Liechtenstein and Austria. In defiance, she pulled her ski cap down over her forehead and refused to pose sweetly for pictures.
Nasty stuff, even for the lowbrow British tabloids, which are famous for their gaudy misbehavior. The main disturbers of the peace, jostling brashly for sensation and circulation among London's ten major dailies and eight major Sunday papers, are the Sun and Star, the Express, the Mirror and the News of the World.