Just The Gift The UK (and Global) Tabloids Needed For the Slow Summer Season – Kate Middleton And Prince William Appear Again To Be An Item, And She Is Already Complaining Again About The Paparazzi

Philip M. Stone July 11, 2007

When Prince William announced three months ago he was breaking up with Kate Middleton it was the paparazzi crying in their beer. But now there are all sorts of signals the two are dating once again, and it’s like old times again – paparazzi are harassing her and she is complaining to the police and to the media.

And if the British media are to be believed, William has convinced Kate that he’s worth putting up with the paparazzi and let the good times roll, although for various reasons such as his army life an official engagement  isn’t expected until sometime in 2009.  The bookies, on the other hand, have 2-1 odds there will be a wedding next year.

There had been stories within the last month that the two were secretly dating again. When Kate and her family were seen sitting just three rows behind William at the concert he and brother Harry sponsored in memory of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, everyone understood this was the real McCoy again.

And then there was the party after the concert, and the tabloids, broadsheets, Berliners, and compacts were beside themselves quoting guests describing the “dirty dancing” between the two.

But it was the Sun that ran the exclusive paparazzi picture on page one and also on page 5 showing the two enjoying a candlelit drink. From the Sun’s description of the way the two danced afterwards it’s a real shame they didn’t get that picture.

The Sun oozed, quoting that inevitable “friend” that tabloids always seem to find, “The pair went wild when Bodyrockers’ hit I Like The Way You Move came on. It used to be ‘their song’. Kate was dancing so sexily in front of Wills that chemistry was just oozing off them. None of us had ever seen so much electricity between them before. It was almost embarrassing to be around them. We all kept saying, ‘Get a room, chaps’.”

Well, with quotes like that on the media landscape it’s no wonder that the paparazzi are all geared up again to catch Kate’s every move. 

On one day as she was driving in London she apparently had a caravan of 10 paparazzi cars in pursuit. According to the Guardian, she stopped her car and asked them to stop, but one replied, “We are not doing so because we know you aren’t going to do anything.”

On another night four cars of paparazzi allegedly tailgated her through London and even though she told them they were scaring her and harassing her they still kept on. She is said to have made two police reports and her lawyers, and William’s lawyers, are said to have made representations to the Press Complaints Commission which in turn is said to have told newspapers privately not to encourage the paparazzi.

The question now is whether the press will keep to promises made before Kate and William broke up three months ago when things had gotten so out of hand that even editors realized it was all too much.

Before the break-up Les Hinton, News International’s executive chairman, had told the editors of his newspapers (Times, Sunday Times, Sun, and The News of the World) they could not buy paparazzi news pictures of Kate because of the media circus being created for someone who was, still, a private person.  Same to be true this time around? One of her neighbors this week complained, “The paparazzi are everywhere. It’s ridiculous, you can’t move for bumping into a photographer.”

Everyone is now watching to see if the police once again provide her an escort as they did when she was “officially” William’s girl. Right now the relationship is being kept somewhat clandestine, but if the cops do start providing protection again for a private person then that is the signal everyone is waiting for that she isn’t so “private” any more.

The paparazzi harassment had led some in government to suggest that the Press Complaints Council was too weak a self-regulatory trade body and perhaps the government needed to pass some privacy legislation. But the Parliament’s culture committee has decided the Commission should continue in its self-regulatory role but it needs to assert itself more after a “less than impressive performance” in restraining tabloid excess.

The committee, commenting on all the shenanigans the paparazzi had gotten up to covering Kate last time around, criticized the Commission for taking “too long to act to protect Kate Middleton from clear and persistent harassment.”  And the committee was scathing over royal telephone bugging that had been conducted by a News of the World reporter who was jailed for the offence, calling the affair “one of the most serious breaches of the code of conduct in recent times.”

But for all that, the committee said self regulation was far preferable to statutory regulation or a privacy law. “Self regulation by the press is infinitely preferable to the alternative,” said committee chairman John Whittingdale.

After William and Kate broke up 12 weeks ago she became the hottest “Kiss and Tell” property in the UK. She allegedly turned down seven figure offers to write a book and she refused all interviews although any of those could have garnered her six, and probably seven figures, too. But she kept quiet – something that royalty really appreciates.

Perhaps her sixth sense told her that it wasn’t really over until the fat lady had sung – which she hasn’t yet --  and that William would be back.

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