The timeless explosion of fantasy’s dream

Posted on August 31, 2007 by bobpiper

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Our Man in Newcastle was unmoved by Diane Windsor’s death, and he thinks the whole thing was not so much a collective hysteria as a media lie. I’m not so sure. I was working in downtown Willenhall at the time and half of the women in the office took a day off to lay flowers outside Buckingham Palace. One diamond from one of her fancy tiaras was probably worth more than they earnt in a leap year, but for some reason they believed that Alistair Campbell ‘people’s princess’ garbage. Like Our Man, I couldn’t understand how people could get so worked up about it. It was another sad death in a car crash of a person I had never met. But there seems to me no doubt that for whatever reason some sense of ‘collective grief’ bordering on hysteria did exist amongst many people.
Whatever else we have to endure today, will the media please, spare us a rendition of that bloody awful maudlin Elton John tribute. If anything could reduce me to tears it would be having to listen to that tripe even one more time.
Update: Fingers… throat…. Yuuurrrghhh!

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12 Responses to The timeless explosion of fantasy’s dream

  1. gordons gofer says:
    August 31, 2007 at 10:41 am

    Fair point Bob,
    I took the opportunity of her funeral to go roller skating on a bypass.. no traffic very strange but a good opportunity for a 16 year old republican to get a bit of exercise.
    To say i couldn’t care less would be a slight overstatement but i still think the reaction of the public was hopelessly over the top given her actual achievements and importance or lack there of.

    Reply
  2. ourman says:
    August 31, 2007 at 11:05 am

    gofer – I don’t think it was the reaction of the public. I think it was the reaction of the media.
    Bob, glad you used that picture from the Guardian and I was considering putting it up to prove my point. Look at that guy – that is not a representative of the British public or even a large percentage of them.
    He is wearing a Union Jack t-shirt and has DIANA written across his forward. That is a very odd individual.
    To repeat – her death was sad…but I have never met one single person who was moved nearly as much as the media claims we all were.
    I don’t know, maybe it was a North/South thing but here in Newcastle it just passed us by.

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  3. gordons gofer says:
    August 31, 2007 at 11:53 am

    Ourman, the fact that i could skate on a bypass suggests quite a large degree of public concern… maybe it was just in the Tory South (Oxfordshire to be exact)the locals have always been a bit Royalist down there.

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  4. ourman says:
    August 31, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    I’ll concede that point – I remember rattling round in my mate’s old mini trying to find a shop open so we could buy cigarettes.
    I recall we have the Pogues on full and we pretty much jigged (if you can do that in a car) down the motorway.
    I won’t deny the roads were empty – but then again they are pretty deserted when England play in the world cup. From a historical point of view it was not-to-be-missed TV – but that doesn’t mean that everyone watched it through tears.
    Don’t forget too that everywhere was shut – there was nowhere to go in the car.

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  5. John says:
    August 31, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    I was trying to sort out a place to live on th eday of the funeral, had an appointment with the estate agents, they were most miffed when we turned up to go about renting the house, as they wanted to sit there watching the bloody funeral. The world seemed a very bizzare place that day.

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  6. C4' B.A. (Hons.) says:
    August 31, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    Tony Blair had Diana murdered because she was a political and popular threat to his emotional hold over the British public. She had to go as far as the Nulabs were concerned.

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  7. Bob Piper says:
    August 31, 2007 at 3:33 pm

    And there was me thinking it was Thatcher, with the candlestick in the drawing room! (Bloody hell, to think they gave this total idiot a BA, even if it was only in History – perhaps there is something in the devaluing of educational awards theory after all).

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  8. ZinZin says:
    August 31, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    And he wonders why he can’t get a job.

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  9. occupiedcountry says:
    August 31, 2007 at 6:47 pm

    I was on holiday in France at the time. The BBC kept informing that the people of France were devastated that she had died in their country.
    Well I’m here to report that they didn’t appear to care a flying fuck.
    We had a great time.

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  10. John says:
    August 31, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    Nothing wrong with history degrees…

    Reply
  11. jailhouselawyer says:
    September 2, 2007 at 11:12 pm

    Just watched that drama on ITV about the Queen being more concerned for the death of a stag than for the death of Diana. I think Helen Mirren is a good actress.

    Reply
  12. Gary Elsby stoke-on-trent says:
    September 4, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    I think you may be quite wrong here,Bob.
    The mass of the population were witnessing a lone woman being hounded by the press and bullied by the establishment.
    The masses felt helpless but offered their sympathetic support. When she died they (we) felt culpable. National grief was quite acceptable and understandable for a person who portrayed the wishes of the people as they wished to be portrayed.
    Blair was in early few week’s of his first term and had the Country with him and wanting him. He spoke for everyone on every subject.
    His view of the Royals returning and the ‘people’s Princess’ was exceptional in it’s accuracy and feeling.
    Blair got it right every step of the way.
    Diana had the title HRH removed days before she died. sir John Stevens and the coroner’s inquest will have to explain this decisionvery slowly indeed.
    Gary

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