Guy Adams's Media Diary

Harry plotter and the Currant Bun

IN THE rich and varied history of Fleet Street cock-ups, The Sun's "Dirty Harry" exclusive has few modern equals, and Rupert Murdoch, among others, may find it eerily reminiscent of the incident that inspired the opening line of Piers Morgan's memoir: "We've been working on a potentially big story for weeks, involving photographs of British soldiers apparently abusing Iraqi civilians in Basra."

In the interests in preventing further outbreaks of incompetence in the ranks, a full and proper investigation may identify certain procedures that ought in future to be followed before any red-top newspaper chooses to splash a set of a "picture sensation" on its front page.

First up, there's an old journalistic routine involving telephones, notepads and pencils. The Currant Bun's star hacks Derek Brown and Duncan Larcombe spent a great deal of time researching their "scoop" and managed to track down a "fellow reveller" who claimed to have been present when the photographs of Prince Harry cuddling the television presenter Natalie Pinkham were taken. However, a phone call to either Clarence House, Pinkham, or indeed her spokesman (the former Sun editor Stuart Higgins) would quickly have established that the shots were three years old, and therefore that the colourful quotes their "source" supplied were a load of old cobblers.

Then there's that priceless commodity: common sense. If Larcombe is, as he claims, the reporter who knows Harry best, he might have noticed that his "picture sensation" showed both princes to be younger than at present, with longer hair than their military professions permit. Pinkham, who has appeared on television for more than a year as a brunette, appears in the photographs as a blonde.

But nothing beats really knowing your turf, and any regular behind the velvet ropes of Boujis, the South Kensington nighterie where the Sun alleged the photographs were taken, would have raised an eyebrow at the purple drapes adorning their background. Boujis has no such decoration. They came from Purple, a Chelsea nightclub that closed this spring.

Perhaps Larcombe was having an off day. Nonetheless, his editor, Rebekah Wade, confronted those responsible for the affair early on Wednesday. The Ginger Ninja, as she is occasionally known, had previously enjoyed a lengthy chat with both Clarence House and Higgins, and was therefore in a state of some agitation.

Given her CV, one might expect Wade to have dispensed an old-fashioned right hook. However, I gather that she made do with an extended "verbal" that culminated with flinging a bottle of mineral water in their general direction.

Meanwhile the police are to investigate how The Sun obtained the stolen photos. Sources tell me that a man in his thirties is to blame: he initially approached Brown claiming - wrongly - to be selling them on Pinkham's behalf. Like most respectable papers, The Sun would never normally reveal sources. But this dubious fellow appears to have stitched them up (by claiming the pics were taken this summer) and trousered a five-figure sum in the process. They may now have few qualms about identifying him to representatives of Her Majesty's Constabulary.

* SPEAKING OF ginger ninjas, there is further news of Simon Heffer's sartorial adventures on the claret-sipping frontline of clubland. A couple of weeks back I learnt that The Heff has attended Lord's cricket ground in his standard workplace uniform: a Garrick tie. This week, news of a second faux pas: I am unreliably informed that he recently lunched at the Garrick in an MCC tie. Apparently, the MCC's "bacon and egg" stripes are prone to set moustaches twitching at the Garrick. A fellow member tells me he's of the opinion that a decent public school education would have prevented Heffer from committing these sartorial boo-boos.

* ALAN HANSEN was for some reason chosen ahead of Heffer to star in the Telegraph's current series of television advertisements, which compares the paper's stable of columnists to various literary superstars. The football pundit's cheery appearance in the BBC commentary box may owe something to the magnificent pay deal he enjoys. For a column a week, this is reported by colleagues to be not unadjacent to £110,000 a year. In return for this fee, Hansen spends a few minutes dictating his thoughts down the telephone to a hapless writer at the paper's Canary Wharf office. Given that the Telegraph last year made dozens of journalists redundant as part of "cost-cutting", you've got to wonder.

* OVER AT the Evening Standard, Tom Teodorczuk last week wrote a news report on the dating "scene" in our capital city, headlined: "It's tough being a singleton in London." This may, or may not, have caused Mr T's new wife (maiden name: Deirdra Singleton) to send the marmalade flying. She has emigrated to London from New York - and happens to be a dead ringer for the Bridget Jones actress Renée Zellweger, whose picture adorned the report.

* FINALLY, THIS newspaper is happy to confirm that rumours of our columnist Bruce Anderson's untimely demise have been exaggerated. On Tuesday, we received several frantic phone calls from a rival title, whose picture desk had been asked to find a mugshot for an obituary. After a brief panic, we established that Anderson is alive and well, and in rude health. The rival title's photo-desk had been misinformed - he'd merely written a piece for them.