The Mail is always entertaining to watch when they're stuck between conflicting loyalties: to the prejudices they hold so dear on the one hand, and to what they know is popular with their audience on the other. Trying to steer a course between peddling royalism, and peddling juicy allegations against extremely rich people who happen to be royals, can't be easy for them.
Another entertaining current example is offered by their scoop about Stephen Fry's impending marriage. On the one hand, you can just sense they want to go all out on this disgusting queer and admitted drug user who is going to get scare-quote-married to a toyboy 30 years younger than he is (he's the same age as his scare-quote-fiancé's father, didn't you know!). And oh yes, the pervert can afford disgustingly expensive cars, too, and a "plush" house, and rhodium engagement rings, all shown in pictures. And his toyboy's parents are disgustingly rich too - they live in a detached property, no less (with the picture to prove it)! Yet on the other hand, they know Fry is popular with their own demographic, so they have to pretend to play nice, and can't even put the scare quotes in. They had a very similar problem about a year ago when Tom Daley came out. How do you inject homophobia into reporting about someone who isn't just hugely popular, but who you've helped make popular? They went so far as to doorstep his grandparents, in the vain hope of getting at least some kind of homophobic comment out of someone close to him they could use. One could almost hear their teeth grind when they had no option left but to go along with the general media line of "aww, isn't it sweet how much in love he is", while of course never forgetting to remind their readers, in every single one of numerous articles, that his boyfriend is 19 years older than he is (or as the Mail liked to put it: "twice his age".)
