Page 49 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

40 Graham White

occupied the public gallery virtually throughout and could be overheard
discussing the performance of various witnesses and counsel during the
breaks; ―a small band of Diana devotees – neat, tidy, grey-haired and armed
with noisy carrier bags and clingfilmed sandwiches – [who] mutter, rustle,
exchange knowing glances and take important-looking notes‖ [Fryer].
The BBC spoke to three such regulars during the final week of the
Inquest. These were John Howsam, a convinced conspiracy theorist who
regularly forsook a seat in the gallery to brandish a placard outside the court;
Annabelle Drummond-Reece, a retired doctor who, the BBC article implies,
attended partly to escape the awkwardness of her own immersion in a court
case; and John Loughrey, a figure who is central to the narrative of absurdity
which surrounds the audience to the Inquest. Loughrey, the man in the gallery
with the writing on his face, is a chef who gave up his job and rented out his
flat – moving in with his sister – in order to attend the Inquest. He was
variously described in a range of publications as a Diana fan, a devotee, at
times as an obsessive [1].A variety of blogs comment on Loughrey‘s obsessive
behaviour, and generally with a more abusive tone than mainstream press
commentary. [Lady Di Blogs]
His behaviour was registered, in all cases, as at the very least delusional,
with the BBC‘s headline –―I‘m going down in history for this‖– suggesting
that this was a figure who had lost all sense of proportion. That at the end of
the Inquest the Coroner made reference to Loughrey in the courtroom as the
only person outside of the Jury to have heard every minute of the evidence,
further supported this characterisation, and my own brief encounters with
Loughrey – who pounced on me with a ―not seen you here before‖ on my
second day in court – made it apparent that he was a figure who had found
some form of self-definition through participation in the event. This
flamboyant courting of minor celebrity was registered through some
ostentatious elements of performance - the facepaint, the daily early arrivals to
queue for tickets, the round of media interviews and photographs in which he
presented himself as a committed Royalist. In each case media commentary
drew him into the circulation of meanings surrounding the Inquest in which
they began to serve a variety of semiotic functions, operating as indexes of the

1
A variety of blogs comment on Loughrey‘s obsessive behaviour, and generally with a more
th
abusive tone to them than mainstream press commentary, see ‗Lady Di‘s 13 man set for
Royalist celebrity Circuit‘. Examples at the time of writing include
www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-guru/2008/lady-dis-13th-man-set-for-
roya-html, www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2008/04/08, and www.gamestm.co.uk/ forum/ view
topic.php?t=10033@sid=af308b1b031c3e0eb33763b3166b2051