MEDIA ARISTOCRAT MEETS THE REAL THING. IS IT LOVE?

Andrew Davidson reports on the connections

and similarities between two men from famous families, and wonders if the friendship can survive exposure

THE PALACE is pleased to announce the engagement of HRH the Prince of Wales and his latest biographer, Mr Jonathan Dimbleby. Needless to say, mutter Dimble- by's disbelieving friends, they have fallen madly in love.

The chumming-up of the radical Dimble- by — one of the best, if not the best, cur- rent affairs television reporters of his generation — and the future monarch has surprised many in both men's circles. Later this month, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Prince of Wales's investiture, Dimbleby's epic two-and-a- half-hour film about Prince Charles will be screened across prime-time ITV. In November, five months late, the epic book —The Prince of Wales: An Intimate Portrait — follows.

No one, except Dimbleby, who has remained resolutely mum on the contents, is quite sure what the book is going to be like. It is not a book of the film nor, as some believe, 'a biography of ideas' (what- ever that means). Rumour has it that the first draft is finished and that Dimbleby has wildly overwritten, taking over 100,000 words to get Prince Charles into the the navy, and is now frantically cutting back. Rubbish, say his publishers, Little Brown.

All that is certain is that Dimbleby, 49, is on a hiding to nothing. Everyone wants to know about that marriage. But if Dimbleby really tackles the questions of the Princess of Wales, Camilla Parker-Bowles and how the future Defender of the Faith squares an (allegedly) adulterous circle, he won't get his book past Prince Charles's army of lawyers and retainers. And if Dimbleby doesn't tackle those questions, no one will take the rest of the book — however good it is— seriously.

Which is why many close to the likeable but ambitious Dimbleby are worried about how he is going to come out of all this. The suspicion is that he will simply end up a pawn in the publicity game being played out between Prince Charles, his private secretary Richard Aylard and the Princess of Wales. It was Aylard who pushed the idea of book and film through, leading some to conclude that Dimbleby is being set up as the Highgrove riposte to Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story. He could be in for a mauling.

The knives are already out. 'When peo- ple ask me why Jonathan Dimbleby is throwing away his reputation to rescue that of Prince Charles,' says Anthony Holden acidly, 'I reply that it just goes to show that monarchy is not the only hereditary busi- ness in his country.'

Holden, formerly a journalistic insider in the Prince's camp but now his sworn enemy, may have a point. What is it about the Dimblebys and royalty? Father Richard, 'voice of the nation', became our first television star with his sonorous and reverential commentaries on state occa- sions like the Coronation. Elder brother David, no stranger to state occasions him- self, was poised earlier this year to sign on for a six-part BBC series called Monarchy (do we need another one?) for transmis- sion next year. Now, witnessing his broth- er's 'red carpet fever' for Charles, he is apparently thinking again.

Perhaps the intertwining of television's own royal family with the real one is inevitable. Television, after all, has played a crucial role in propping up the monarchy. Dimbleby's film on the Prince of Wales, as yet untitled but scheduled, tellingly, to run straight after Coronation Street, on 29 June, is another in a long line where the royal family has granted television 'access' for behind-the-scenes footage and 'insight' for which read public relations soap.The results have usually been execrable, culmi- nating recently in the BBC's slobbering Elizabeth R.

But the rules of the game, post-Morton, have changed. The producer of the Prince Charles film, Christopher Martin, who had previously made two documentaries with the Prince, A Vision of Britain and Earth in Balance, anticipated this and specifically invited the younger Dimbleby into the pro- ject to forestall any criticism. Ironically, the reverse has happened; Dimbleby, renowned in media circles as a restless workaholic, negotiated to do the book as well, and critics swiftly deduced that he had been sucked into Prince Charles's entourage. 'Royalty does do weird things to the nicest people,' muses one old Dimbleby friend.

Indeed, the Prince and the broadcaster have reportedly got on splendidly. Not only have Dimbleby and his crew been trailing after the future king to places like Mexico, Poland, the Gulf and Australia, where they got good footage of Prince Charles nearly being shot, but they have been recording interview after interview at Highgrove, about religion, the environment, the army and, yes, marriage. 'I have spent over 200 hours in the man's company and not one of them dull!' is Dimbleby's (possibly apoc- ryphal) riposte to a friend's ribbing about the project. By last spring it was even being suggested that Dimbleby was helping the Prince of Wales with his speeches.

Of course, no one should be surprised that the two have hit it off. They have a lot in common: not just the New Agey stuff, which both men have been drifting towards, but also a love of the environ- ment, an interest in horses (Dimbleby was once, believe it or not, showjumping cham- pion of the south of England, at the age of 20), and famous fathers. Both too, as one observer has put it bluntly, are short men with skinny, media-shrewd wives.

Certainly, the recent wave of newspaper pieces by Mrs Dimbleby, aka the author Bel Mooney, on how she joined New Age travellers protesting against a bypass being built near the family vicarage was as embarrassing, in its own way, as any of Mr Morton's revelations. Full of the joys of yurt-living (provided you can get your Gre- gorian chants on the tape deck and Jonathan on the mobile phone) Bel short for Beryl — left no chattering-class eco-cliché unplundered. She also gained extraordinary publicity for her protest.

The difference between the Prince, 45, and his new friend is that Dimbleby still lives with his wife. Last year Bel and Jonathan threw a great-and- the-good party at the Savile Club, to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Mooney, once a sta- ple figure on the London literary luvvie cir- cuit before she headed to the country, is fond of giving people little hand-made boxes with tiny symbols inside to represent key episodes in life. The one she gave Jonathan carries the quote: 'And the oak tree and the cypress grew not in each other's shade' (Gibran).

Still, it is quite a leap for Dimbleby from crusading television journalist to royal Boswell. This, remember, is the man who, despite his public school background (Charterhouse, the oldish school for newish money), 'worshipped' the likes of Arthur Scargill and Jimmy Reid in the Seventies, according to some. Tony Howard, who commissioned him to write for the New Statesman, remembers pleading with him not to speak at a Cambridge Union debate entitled 'This house would pull the plugs on the fascist thugs!' Dimbleby was for pulling the plugs. 'Jonathan,' begged Howard, 'what are you doing?'

Times change, however, and the slow gentrification of Dimbleby — even if Bel remains more earnestly leftish — has tick- led his old colleagues. Now he is more like- ly to be found playing tennis with the Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten (best friend, last match abandoned at 5-5), or dining with the William Waldegraves, all great mates, rather than frying any fascists. He has the old vicarage and farmland in Avon, and is president of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. He had, after all, attended Cirencester Agricultural College before London University, and is never happier than when on his tractor.; `I've seen him on it for six to seven hours!' confirms Patten. But his real role, like his brother's, is that of a richly rewarded prince among the media aristocracy.

The wild hair and open-necked shirts have gone, and with it the peevish, terrier- like manner, to be replaced on air by an attempt at warm urbanity (even though his brother does it better). On meeting him there is certain jovial deference — the little bow, the smile, the nodding of the head that he reserves for those he doesn't know well, but feels are important. Some old col- leagues believe he has lost his edge. The Independent even recently described his introductions on Radio 4's Any Questions? as lickspittle.

Yet from the Prince of Wales's point of view, the choice of the younger Dimbleby as biographer must have looked rather clever. Here was a man who would not pro- duce sheer puffery, one whose rough edges had been knocked off. And if the motiva- tion was to put Prince Charles's side of the story, at least it would be taken seriously. For, as Christopher Martin explains about the film, 'If you are going on the record you might as well do it in a big way, and obviously one of the reasons for making this is to set the record straight on a num- ber of things that have been misrepresent- ed, or made up.' The book, says Martin, was the logical next step as it will have 'a more permanent form' than any pro- gramme. 'If I had been the Prince of Wales,' says Dimbleby's friend Patten, would have been very pleased to have got him.'

What's in it for Dimbleby? His friends disagree on his motivation: ambition, money, insecurity, even 'younger brother syndrome'. Some believe he is obsessed with matching and outstripping brother David's success at the BBC, and the Prince of Wales link will give him another leg-up. But, in fact, Jonathan is not the classic, chippy kid brother that many take him for, he's not even the youngest Dimbleby — the mistake many make: brother Nicholas and sister Sally are younger. And those who have worked with him say that on set Jonathan would never hear a word of criti- cism of David, to whom he is close. Both brothers stick to their rule that they will `Please, sir, I want less sodium, fat and cholesterol.' not comment on the career of the other, even if they tread on each other's toes, and that is often mistaken for frosty disdain.

Nor is money likely to be much of a motivation any more. Publishing gossip insists Dimbleby got an advance of around £100,000 for his Prince Charles book. But Dimbleby is already nicely set up with his Any Questions? contract and a huge five- year, five-film deal to chart his chum Pat- ten's time in Hong Kong, in a series titled The Last Governor. The BBC is being char- acteristically coy about the cost of the series, but anyone interested enough to probe the accounts of Dimbleby's produc- tion company Glebe — 85 per cent owned by Mrs Dimbleby — will find a budget fig- ure not unadjacent to £999,503 pledged to the programmes. (Well, the cost of all that business-class flying is expensive.) No, it has to be ambition. Dimbleby's friends say he has wanted to write a major work for years. All the telling signs are there: his passion for politics and constitu- tional affairs, his huge and ever-increasing collection of serious books, the pictures of famous writers —Lawrence, Hugo, Hardy, Dryden, Swift — on his sitting-room walls. Some claim that even recently he was plot- ting an approved biography of Ted Heath. Instead, he caught a bigger fish, but with it has himself become enmeshed in a com- pletely different set of problems.

The deal with the Prince of Wales, enshrined in a contract drawn up by the Queen's lawyers, Farrer & Co, gives him access to all Prince Charles's archives and some correspondence, and, he believes, protects the book from royal 'vetting'. Dim- bleby, who has taken a terrible pasting at leftie dinner parties over the last 18 months for sucking up and selling out, has always insisted that the book won't be 'approved', and that all will be revealed. Those who know him well say that fits. 'The thing about Jonathan,' says Glenwyn Benson, editor of Panorama, who worked with him on the BBC's On The Record, 'is that he never ducks anything. Never.'

Yet the royal links may have already damaged his reputation for incorruptibility. Last year an initial invitation to the Princess of Wales to give the BBC's presti- gious Dimbleby Lecture was hastily with- drawn. All the Dimblebys have a say in who is chosen, and it was swiftly inferred that the Prince of Wales through Jonathan had belatedly made his feelings plain.

It remains to be seen whether Dimble- by's book can really be anything other than a hagiography, especially as he and Prince Charles are now reportedly so wrapped up in each other. He has not, for a start, inter- viewed many of those who have been most critical of the Prince's conduct of late. To satisfy those critics and others, Dimbleby may have to produce something that causes the Prince of Wales to fall violently out of love with him. This month's film will give the first indication of whether the engage- ment can last.