ARE you sitting comfortably? Perhaps a nice soft cushion and a first-aid kit would be advisable. Right, let's talk sado-masochism, and the concepts of prudery, privacy and pleasure.
I admit it is not the most appropriate subject for the Sabbath but, hey, the readers of Britain's biggest-selling newspaper have been lapping it up with their Sunday morning fry-up for weeks. For those who would not be seen dead picking up a copy of
the News of the World and who have led a life sheltered from the anything-goes morality of modern times, the Max Mosley court case has been an eye-popping education.
Being of a relatively normal disposition, as well as careful with my cash, I know what would have caused me most pain in the Mosley scenario – shelling out £500 each to five trollops to act out weird fantasies. Mosley is supposed to be the highly responsible president of the prestigious governing body of international motor sport; never mind his morals, now that we know how stupid he is, I wouldn't let him fill my car with petrol.
We have learned that there is such a thing as a BDSM scene (bondage discipline, domination and submission) a fairly tight-knit, not to say chained and shackled, community. Our vocabulary has expanded with the knowledge that one tart with a whip is a dominatrix, but five of them are dominatrices. The whole thing collapses into trouser-dropping farce with the revelation that Mosley did not hear the screams of "We are the Aryan race, the blondes!" because his hearing aids would not have picked this up in all the excitement.
And, after whipping each other to the point of drawing blood, the participants sit down (very gently, one suspects) and have a nice cup of tea together. How very English!
Am I wrong in believing this kind of behaviour is very peculiarly English? I cannot vouch for what goes on behind the curtains in Edinburgh's New Town or Glasgow's West End, but I would think the skelping of bums is too debasing for proud and manly Scots.
As for the court case, presumably, the only way the lawyers got through weeks of thwacking, squealing and phoney accents was by thinking of their £850,000 legal bill. Erotic it was not, more like a combination of 'Allo, 'Allo and Whacko!
Meanwhile the more pompous practitioners of my trade have been blowing off about the effect on "public interest" journalism and privacy law introduced by the back door. In the first place, the Mosley story was not high-minded public interest, it was lasciviousness and impure prurience. Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World, pontificates: "Our press is less free today after another judgment based on privacy laws emanating from Europe." Coco the Clown has more credibility than Colin on that subject. He failed to establish the public interest defence against the charge of invasion of privacy; failed to get a translation of the German dialogue on the sneak video, which was crucial to the allegation of Nazi connotations; failed to order written statements on highly sensitive evidence; and failed to put the story to Mosley before publication.
Having been on a tabloid editorial floor for more years than was good for me, I can conceive how the executives seized on it as a rollicking good yarn, a great circulation-boosting wheeze. With what glee they wrote the headline "The Pits!", and stuck a chequered flag over someone's private parts. Was their first thought that they would be performing a public service in publishing it? I think not – public voyeurism and lip-licking.
The paper's claim that Mosley's position as head of Formula One made his private perversions a matter of public interest was not upheld. He did not sue for libel nor injury to his reputation because he could not; he could not deny the video and his reputation was already wrecked. Instead, he sued for breach of privacy and the broad-minded Mr Justice Eady said he had a reasonable expectation of privacy "in relation to sexual activities (albeit unconventional) carried on between consenting adults on private property".
Echoes there of the Victorian attitude, revived during the debate on homosexual law reform: "It doesn't make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."
Shrugging aside what most of us regard as depraved and morally repugnant, what he called "the Nazi lie" seems to have been more important to Mosley. His life has been blighted by being born the son of the British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley – so, if not Nazi, it was certainly strange that his sexual fantasy should involve pseudo-military uniforms and speaking in German. The judge accepted the explanation that they were acting out a prison scenario, common on the BDSM scene. So it was not Auschwitz, it was Prisoner Cell Block H.
The judge declares there is nothing "landmark" about the decision and we have to take him at his word that it cannot seriously be suggested that the case "is likely to inhibit serious investigative journalism into crime or wrongdoing, where the public interest is more genuinely engaged". In other words, proper, serious investigative journalism can continue as before.
All that has happened is that two already well-known truths have been re-asserted: There's nowt so queer as folk. And there are no depths too murky and mucky for sections of the British press to plumb.
The full article contains 936 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
