ANOTHER VOICE
Hurry on the day when the rich and famous do nothing except enrich themselves via Mr Clifford
MATTHEW PARRIS
Now that Jerry Hayes MP is suing the News of the World we are prohibited from discussing the merits of the paper's claims, which the MP denies, about his friendship with Paul Stone. This is a relief. What they did or did not do is none of my business. Suffice it to say that without Mr Hayes the Commons would be a drabber place, his Harlow constituents robbed of a brave little bundle of energy. He is a friend.
Let us ignore that distressing dispute. Instead I want to look on the bright side. For what has the whole business amounted to but a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich of which every Spectator reader could approve?
Let me explain. It has been rumoured that the News of the World paid £100,000 for this story, of which Mr Stone received £75,000 and his publicist, Max Clifford, some £25,000. Stone denies this, but a superb interview by Joanna Coles in the Guardian last Saturday reports him as say- ing that to help him decide whether to sell his story he sat at his kitchen table and wrote out a list of pros and cons: there were many cons, but what were the pros? `Only the money,' Stone said.
Where did the News of the World find the money? From sales of the newspaper and from advertising. Readers pay for both: through the cover price of the paper, and through the margin advertising adds to the price of the wares they buy. So the 12 mil- lion readers of the News of the World have stumped up £100,000 for Paul Stone and Max Clifford.
If you asked readers whether they much cared for either, most would say no. But they have funded a substantial nest-egg for both. This is especially generous when you consider that most of these readers enjoy an income below the national average — a cir- cumstance which modern, media-wise chari- ties encourage us to call 'living in poverty'.
So, via the newspaper, Britain's poor have endowed a trainee tax-accountant and former chairman of the Peterborough Young Conservatives and further enriched a wealthy publicist. If Hayes's case against the Sunday paper comes to court, the poor will end up bankrolling its lawyers, too. Should the newspaper lose the case, read- ers may also have to fund the costs on both sides, plus damages for Hayes. Libel dam- ages are tax-free. The News of the World helped buy David Steel a castle, Aikwood Tower. This is good news. Drink and tobacco are not tax-free, and for centuries the poor have contributed disproportionately through their taste for both. They cough up yet more in betting taxes. Then there is the new national lottery: a permanent mecha- nism for the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. People struggling to feed their children are trapped by a mirage of untold wealth into providing a pound a week to subsidise seats for the upper-mid- dle class at the Royal Opera.
And now this! The mirror image, I sup- pose, would be for Harpers & Queen to open its chequebook to impoverished clerks and hod-carriers to snitch on allegedly lustful hospital porters or local government cleaners. The readers of Harpers would be horrified. They do not shell out for this smart publication in order to see people of no interest to them paid their own money to tell tales about each other's drab lives. But the poor, it seems, will open their threadbare purses time and again to read yet another story about the alleged doings of the rich.
The process is to be applauded. My con- cern is only that it should be properly organised and, if possible, placed on a less haphazard footing. In this case, unless libel can be shown and remedied, then four members of the Establishment and one deserving Tory institution have been left out of the proletariat's involuntary largesse. Jerry and Alison Hayes and their two appealing children have had not a penny, so far. The Harlow Conservative Association (who have been hugely inconvenienced) are A superwoman's place is in the boardroom.' uncompensated for their trouble. Not every scandal-sheet pantomime can end in a successful court action. Where no libel has occurred or can be proved, half the cast remain unremunerated. Could we not in future arrange some sort of safety net to ensure that all principal figures fin- gered in newspaper gossip get a share in the spoils? In return it should prove possi- ble to secure their co-operation in puffing the story — tacit agreement, perhaps, via the publicity agent, to deny all, or confess all (across another six pages of the newspa- per), or 'go into hiding' in Tierra del Fuego, whither they can be tracked down and 'discovered' by the News of the World in another world exclusive spread across another six pages of another edition. This sort of thing does much to enliven the hum- drum existence of the readers of downmar- ket Sunday tabloids. It is almost a public service.
Simple arithmetic suggests that, spread over 12 million, the cost to News of the World readers of the Hayes story so far has been less than a penny each — and this for the two characters they probably like least. Would Britain's working classes notice a penny extra for the more likable Jerry, Ali- son and the kids? Or another half-penny for the beleaguered Harlow Conservative Association, who could stage a 'crunch' meeting — infiltrated by media spies, as was Sir Nicholas Scott's? Only last week we read of two children who allegedly mur- dered their mother in exchange for the promise of jet-skis. We could strike a much better deal for MPs' children in return for something less extreme. What journalists, publicists, kissers-and- tellers and kissed-and-told-on have to realise is that we are all on the same side. It is not a matter of predator versus prey unless the prey are the readers, who pay for the whole pantomime. A little quiet co- operation between the pantomime's cast could ensure a better pantomime and a big- ger box-office. Let's aim for that happy state in which the rich and famous in Britain cease all employment, but instead have affairs with people, gossip about each other and sell each other's stories, via Mr Clifford, to Sunday newspapers which the toiling mass- es toil a little harder to afford.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter of the Times.
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