Fergie’s mystic healer? The Queen Mum in hospital or a royal mysteriously absent from Ascot?

Four decades of royal reporting started on the Queen’s local paper, the Windsor Express 40 miles from London. Its office was right on the high street. Easy then for readers to drop in with a classified ad, still the lifeblood of a local paper in the early 1980s.

Buckingham Palace during the annual Trooping the Colour Ceremony on June 15, 2013.Credit:Getty

Out back was the iron dinosaur of a printing press. Out front was a small first floor balcony from where, coffee in hand, at 11am we could watch bandsmen marching through the town for changing of the guard at Windsor Castle.

We prided ourselves as being “the Queen’s local paper”. Whether she or Philip read it or used it as bedding for the corgis we never knew. But after a hard day’s reporting with staff departing for one of the town’s many hostelries, it wasn’t uncommon to see a chauffeured burgundy limousine purr around a corner with a familiar face in the rear seat. Not surprising then that royal reporting was an important part of the news patch and instilled in our blood.

Princer Harry’s first day at school reported by Tim Barlass in the Evening Standard dated September 11, 1989. Credit:Sam Mooy

In 1983 the Queen’s head gamekeeper William Fenwick was awarded the Royal Victorian Medal (silver) in the New Year’s honours. He agreed to let the local paper view the game store where birds shot by the royals on the Windsor Estate we’re hung for a day, or several. It was stuffed to the rafters with woodcock, pheasants, pigeons and more. “No photos please” said Mr Fenwick. It was a picture that could have gone everywhere but, alone and pre-mobile camera, the royal game larder remained unseen and he remained employed.

That was the story that started almost 40 years of occasional reporting on the royal family. But never as one of the self-proclaimed royal “experts”, duty bound to write the “inside” story of the romantic dalliances of the latest young royal.

Progressing to a grown up newspaper the “press pack” was there to witness Prince Harry’s first day at school in Notting Hill in 1989. Perfect fodder for London’s Evening Standard. Harry turned, blue kitbag in hand, for an obligatory smile for the intimate gathering of about 50 photographers and everyone was happy. Even school headmistress Frederika Blair-Turner seemed more relaxed as her majesty’s press departed the premises.

Fergie, married to Andrew, Duke of York, in the headlines of late, always seemed to be in the news in the early ’90s. A letter requesting an interview with her father Major Ron Ferguson, polo pony trainer extraordinaire, was sadly declined by his wife in December 1987. Susan Ferguson wrote on Dummer House headed notepaper “My husband feels that we should not be giving interviews of this nature at the present time.” The likelihood of a chat went completely out the window after Major Ron was photographed by the News of the World leaving a house of ill repute the following year.

Fergie in 1992, it emerged, was seeing a mystic healer. Seated under a small Perspex blue pyramid with clairvoyant Madame Vasso she places her hands above mine and asks if I can feel the warmth. Of the state of the Yorks’ marriage, she said that Fergie loves him (Andrew) very much and he loves her. They are very happy together.” Mystics, like everybody, can’t always get it right.

Royal Ascot, the champagne-fuelled racing event with royals attending en masse was always good for a story. The princess’ hat was exquisite/appalling/blown off. But a sure fire default story was if one of the royals was absent from the expected procession of open landaus arriving at the Berkshire course. “Mystery today surrounds the absence of the ageing Queen Mother/ageing Prince Philip or Princess Diana … ”

An interview with Fergie’s mystic healer in the Evening Standard dated February 13, 1992. Credit:Sam Mooy

Royal health and security remains keenly reported. To Limassol in Cyprus in 1993 where massed demonstrations threaten to overshadow Commonwealth talks. Reports the Queen’s Rolls-Royce had been pelted with eggs were unfounded and misleading said local police. But with five tabloids and three broadsheets competing for royal stories, it was a brave editor who decided not to send.

The same year the press pack is assembled outside Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where the Queen mother has had a one-hour operation to have a throat obstruction removed. Had they discovered a lump or was it food? After all the Queen Mum was 92 and there had been a well-publicised past incident when she choked on a fish bone.

Invariably there was a lot of hanging around. We would cover for each other to fetch coffees, sandwiches or cigarettes but were often nervous that the “news” would happen in our absence. It was even riskier for photographers who, pre-digital, would often “share a neg” so that someone didn’t lose their job if they missed the shot.

If a royal family member spoke to the crowd, each interviewee would be interrogated afterwards to see what was said. On one occasion Princess Diana indicated she was sharing in someone’s grief because it was the anniversary of the loss of her father, Earl Spencer. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a scoop. All the other reporters are immediately buddies and anxious to get the quotes.

The Evening Standard dated October 18, 1994 Credit:Sam Mooy

Only on one occasion was an interview forthcoming, from David Linley the Queen’s furniture designer nephew. He spoke after his shop had burnt down and the reason for talking seemed to be to let customers know he was back open for business.

What will The Princess Royal say or do today as patron of the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW celebrating its bicentenary. Will her shoe get stuck in the mud? Will a cow lick her hand? Albeit a fleeting visit and much of it in private, this occasional royal observer predicts, whatever happens, she can expect extensive media coverage and analysis of every move.

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