Did you read the tell-all interview with the Queen in the glossy mags last week? The one where she dished the dirt on life with Prince Philip and shared her worst fashion faux pas? Where she ranted about all those dreadful Prime Ministers and let the photographers see the “real woman beneath the crown”?
Of course you didn’t. Unless you chanced upon the few quotes Princess Elizabeth gave to Life magazine on August 20, 1945, you will not have read or watched a single personal interview with the Queen during her 60-year reign. She is often seen, but rarely heard.
Despite reigning in an age of reality TV, celebrity and political spin doctors, the Queen’s reclusive approach has not dented her public appeal and has almost certainly strengthened it.
Her annual appearance, stilted and clipped, at Christmas is usually all we get. We have to make do with hundreds of images of a queen who smiles sweetly at flag-bearing children around the world but avoids criticism by never opening her mouth.
Perhaps she picked up her media strategy from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who once said: “It’s better to be silent than to be a fool,” and has steadfastly avoided talking to the press in the 52 years since the publication of her only novel.
Advertisement
Greta Garbo, whose face was almost as famous during Hollywood’s silent period as the Queen’s is now, gave two press conferences in the 1930s but — unlike the Queen, who is still working well into her 80s — Garbo retired at the age of 36 and shunned all publicity.
Queen of fashion Kate Moss only rarely grants interviews and when she does, you often wish that she hadn’t. By and large her mantra — “never complain, never explain” — has worked a treat. Meanwhile, Sacha Baron Cohen finally gave an interview last month as himself, rather than in character as Ali G or Borat. So perhaps it is time for the Queen to ditch the crown and take to the sofa of This Morning. On second thoughts, perhaps not.