DIARY IAN HISLOP
Imust be terribly careful writing in The Spectator about Darius Guppy. This maga- zine has twice printed pieces by Veronica Lodge (a pseudonym) about how badly Guppy has been treated by the press. According to Veronica Lodge the coverage of his trial was an example of the journal- ism of envy, or 'the happiness dull people feel when an interesting person runs into trouble.' (The trouble involved convictions for fraud, theft and false accounting and a sentence of five years for his part in £1.8 million insurance swindle.) The editor of The Spectator has told me that he shares Lodge's views on 'the poison-pen epidemic' and the motivation of jealous hacks. Well, I hope they both approve of the latest issue of Hello!, which announces on its front page: 'First interview with Darius Guppy from his prison cell.' There are seven pages devoted to Guppy's wife and new baby, and only one page to the man himself, but there is no doubt that he is the scoop. Lodge cited Hello! as an example of a more posi- tive and more popular style of journalism in the first of her Spectator pieces last year. It is fitting that Hello! should choose Guppy, Earl Spencer's best man, for one of its clas- sic interviews. Who but Hello! would ask this question: 'Although you were much maligned by the press, you've earned a great deal of personal and public support. Can you tell us about the mail you receive daily?' The answer to this is that a lot of people do write to Darius (as the interview- er calls him) and, interestingly, many of them write in order to say that they don't believe anything the tabloids print about him. When asked subsequently in an equal- ly tough question whether he could com- ment on his feelings about the trial and the sentencing, Darius only wants to say one thing: that he has been 'traduced by the tabloid press'. In this reply, as in all the oth- ers, he makes no mention of remorse or regret. There is no suggestion that he might have done something wrong; no hint that although the tabloid press may have behaved badly, Darius Guppy has not exactly behaved well. At one point he even begins to expound on 'strength of charac- ter'. In fact, all that comes across from the Interview is Guppy's breathtaking arro- gance. He talks incessantly about being misrepresented by the press, but even in Hello! manages to damn himself with his own words.
Sadly, there are no heartwarming pic- tures in the magazine of Guppy showing off his temporary new home. Perhaps the Prison authorities do not approve of that sort of thing. It cannot surely be restraint on the part of Hello! Talking of which, I do hope that Hello! has not paid Guppy any money for this piece. The Press Complaints Commission has very strong views about criminals and their relatives benefiting from selling their stories to newspapers. It is called cheque-book journalism and it is what unpleasant tabloid newspapers get severely criticised for doing. It is not what positive, popular magazines are meant to be about. No, I am sure there was no com- mercial motive involved, and Hello! decid- ed to put Guppy on the front page merely because they believed that it was time his side of the story was told. No doubt they will be following this exclusive with others on the theme of miscarriage of justice. They might even try a convincing one. Look out for: 'Michael Hickey, his cousin Vincent and their friend Jimmy Robinson invite us into their delightful cells to explain their sadness at having been in prison for 14 years for the murder of Carl Bridgewater, which even the foreman of the jury who convicted them says they did not do.' It would look good next to the Princess Stephanie spread.
`Wow!' The top players at Wimbledon this year are going to wear red ribbons in support of an Aids charity set up by Arthur Ashe. I know it is uncharitable of me, but this merely makes me annoyed. It is not froth- ing homophobia or cynical callousness, but simply irritation at yet another demonstra- tion of the monopoly of the disease in the media via the worlds of entertainment, art and sport. The recent figures that demon- strate the disparity in the incidence of Aids and the resources allocated to it do not seem to have altered this situation. Aids charities dominate media events and on these occasions the red ribbon has become de rigueur. At the Bafta awards this year there was a red ribbon waiting on each plate when you sat down at the ceremony, and it was assumed that you would put it on. 'Aids awareness' was the vague explanation offered by a waiter. 'It shows that you know someone who has died of Aids,' a celeb told me. Having just lost a close relative to a disease that is equally incurable though much less fashionable, I decided not to conform. I wanted to know whether one could act independently in these matters. If I felt like making a point about leukaemia, for example, could I wear an L-shape on my lapel in order to let everyone know? Or a big C for cancer? Or a spangly heart for coronary disease?
The above paragraph will no doubt be seen as criticism of 'the gay community'. Which it isn't. And I am not sure I trust the word 'community' very much, anyway. This is not a new sub-Thatcherite theory that there is no such thing as 'community'. There are obviously genuine communities linked by work, locality, place of origin and so on, but the word has been hijacked. It is now mainly used in an attempt to create a homogeneous whole from a group of dis- parate individuals. Instead of just using the plural, the word 'community' is added to make whoever is involved sound more impressive. It is a piece of jargon designed to add weight to whatever argument the speaker is advancing. Instead of talking about 'teachers', we have 'the teaching community'. Instead of 'lawyers', we have `the legal community'. Even people who block up the motorway on bank holidays are no longer 'travellers' but 'the travelling community'. Can anyone better this example I heard on the Today programme earlier this week? A spokesman talking about the British Airways dispute referred to 'the pilot com- munity'.
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