New Orleans Or Bust

‘THAT is Prince Harry aboard the Kubu Queen, a two-storey wooden houseboat with two double bedrooms, balconies and an intact roof. And there’s his true love, Chelsy, on a speedboat.

‘It’s OK. My gun only fires custard pies and Bud’s shoots fresh water’

Bravo! Well done indeed to Harry. It’s a PR coup. Who would have thought that of all the Royals, it would be the grill head party boy who’d do his bit for the relief effort in New Orleans?

Only, it’s not Louisiana, it’s Botswana. And that fag and can of beer in Harry’s hands are not sustenance for one of the dispossessed but for his own gratification. The houseboat is his holiday home. The speed boat is taking Harry and Chelsy on a fishing trip.

Oh, well. It was an easy mistake to make. We’ve become so used to our papers leading with shots of the devastation in America that when we saw the boats, we believed today’s Mail was following the trend.

But things have changed at the Mail. Harry is on page three, and it’s not until pages 12 and 13 that we learn of the disaster in the United States.

And then the stand-out picture is not of boats and the rescue effort, nor of Prince Charles and Princess Michael offering jars of jam to the hungry, but of a line of armed police descending an escalator in the New Orleans Convention Centre.

Looking at the tooled-up crew peering down the sights of their huge weapons, a survivor would be forgiven for thinking it best to keep hiding out.

Who knows what will happen when the police spot you moving among the bodies and detritus of human life that litter the place.

“Do you have a receipt for the sweatshirt you are wearing, sir?” barks the gung-ho cop. “Er, no,” says the survivor in reply. “It was a present from my mom.” Cop: “You looters make me sick! Bang!”

And that’s when the police don’t toy with you first. On the Star’s front page (“FLASH YOUR BOOBS OR YOU DROWN”), the paper marvels at news that British girls stranded on a hotel roof in New Orleans were invited by cops passing by on a rescue boat to lift up their tops if they wanted to be saved.

Scurrying through the paper to find out what happened next, moving past shots of Rachel Hunter in her knickers and bra, and “sexy maiden Natalie” in just her knickers, we learn that the British girls refused to comply.

British tourist Gerald Scott tells all. “At one point there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying, ‘Can you help us?’ The policemen said, ‘Show us what you’ve got’ and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts. When the girls refused, they said, ‘Fine’ – and roared off in their boat.”

This a pretty despicable act, made yet worse when we hear that the cops had cameras and were taking photos of the group.

Of course, if this had been Faliraki, the girls may well have dived into the waters and held in an impromptu wet-T-shirt contest. But it’s America, where things are far more conservative and civilised.

Or at least that’s how things used to appear…’

Posted: 7th, September 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink