The royals - Kitty Kelley [231]
Six months later a sneak shot of Diana appeared on the front page of the Sunday Mirror in spandex cycling shorts and a snug turquoise leotard. The newspaper had agreed to pay $250,000 for photos that showed her pushing a shoulder press with her legs spread wide apart. The poses were unflattering, even for a young woman as beautiful as the Princess, and the harsh angles emphasized her pelvis, revealing every bulge and fold and crease around her hips.
Looking at the voyeuristic photos made some people feel as if a dirty trick had been played on an unsuspecting maiden. Although Diana had borne children and taken lovers, she still retained an aura of demure innocence. People had seen photos of her plunging cleavage and her high kicks across a stage in a slinky satin slip; they had even seen her pregnant in a bikini. But they had never seen her looking coarse.
“It was a crotch shot, plain and simple,” said one magazine editor. “Undignified and disgusting.”
The royal biographer Brian Hoey said the pictures would never have been published in Britain if Diana had not been separated from Prince Charles. “She is now treated by the media with the same sort of disdain and contempt as film stars or… Fergie.”
Diana felt bruised and abused. “I burst into tears when I saw that photograph,” she said. “I felt insulted and humiliated and violated….”
The Palace and Parliament rallied to her side, deploring the invasion of her privacy. Her husband felt she got no more than an exhibitionist deserved, but her father-in-law urged her to sue. The furor over the pictures dominated the media for days, with politicians demanding press curbs and publishers protesting. The Mirror Group, the owner of the offending paper, withdrew from the Press Complaints Commission, and the editor admitted he was a “ratbag.” But the gym owner was unapologetic.
“What I did was sneaky, surreptitious, and preplanned,” said Bryce Taylor. “I don’t make excuses…. It was underhand…. But if I told you I had an absolutely legal scam which didn’t hurt anyone and would make you a million pounds, wouldn’t you say yes?”
He hired a publicist and contracted with a photo agency to syndicate the eighty-two pictures of Diana he had taken. The Princess’s lawyers obtained an injunction that froze the money Taylor was supposed to receive. With the full support of the Queen, Diana sued the newspaper and the photographer. She declared in sealed court documents:
I was shocked when I saw photographs of myself exercising at the club as published in The Sunday Mirror on 7th November 1993 and The Daily Mirror on 8th November 1993. I was unaware that any such photographs had been taken and had at no time given my consent to being photographed at the club in any circumstances. I considered Mr. Taylor’s conduct to be a betrayal of the trust I had vested in him.
The Princess intended to create a privacy law in England that did not exist and she was prepared to testify in court. “I will do whatever it takes to achieve justice,” she said. She issued a statement, expressing her gratitude to everyone who had condemned the actions of the Mirror newspapers. Within weeks the disgraced gym owner went broke trying to defend himself. But under Britain’s legal aid system, he now qualified for expert counsel, because he was an indigent defendant in a case that sought to establish a new law. So he petitioned the court, and the presiding judge appointed one of the country’s best-known lawyers, Geoffrey Robertson QC (Queen’s Counsel), to represent him.
Suddenly, what had looked like a case weighted in favor of the Princess now became even odds. Robertson was well matched to the skills of Diana’s lawyer, Anthony Julius of the law firm Mischon de Reya. The gym owner felt especially fortunate because Robertson was an Australian, known to be a republican, and not impressed by royalty. To Robertson, the Princess of Wales was merely a rich plaintiff named Diana Windsor.