They were provided by an international news agency called Splash which concentrates on celebrity stories It has offices in London, Los Angeles, New York and Florida. Press Gazette, the media industry magazine, interviewed Splash's Florida bureau chief David Leigh, a former Daily Express man. Clues: the sun was shining and the Blairs had access to the sea. Stephen Glover wrote such a piece in The Independent, and wrote it again the next day in the Daily Mail. Alice Miles did so in The Times, suggesting a location, but adding "I don't know".London-based correspondents from overseas, such as Mary Jordan in The Washington Post (syndicated around the world) wrote a "where's Tony?" story with a seven-word quote from "engineer John Costello", whoever he might be, saying, "I bet he is in the Caribbean." The Sun was the first paper in this country to suggest this region.Meanwhile pictures were appearing, most extensively in the Mail, and cropped to reveal only the Prime Minister's midriff, a lot of blue water, some swimming shorts in an unpleasant shade of green, and a group of people chatting on a boat.
We have had the crazy situation of journalists purporting to be trying to find out what they already know. Investigative journalism should always be this easy!Just as serious newspapers and the BBC follow up tabloid scandal stories by focussing on the privacy implications of the story that they then repeat, so stories have been run about the legitimacy of Hill's request, hinting at the location that must not be disclosed. That request, to a certain and decreasing extent, has been respected because in the unlikely event of anything happening to the Blairs no editor wants to be the one who broke ranks.The result, however, has been silliness of the highest order as newspapers have employed every trick in the book to tell without telling. Prince Girolamo Strozzie (Tuscany), Sir Cliff Richard (Barbados) and Silvio Berlusconi (Sardinia) have all been obliging in the past. But this year we have not been told where the Blairs are unwinding. Before they set off for who knows where (actually the whole of the media knows) the Prime Minister's communications director, David Hill, wrote to editors asking that "for security reasons" the holiday location should not be disclosed until the first family was safely back home.
One tried and trusted way of filling the August vacuum is to publish stories about where the rich and powerful are holidaying. In the case of the Blairs it can be hyped into an unconvincing scandal (it is merely distasteful) since the first family are well-known for tapping up wealthy acquaintances with villas in exotic places to avoid having to read the travel brochures or make much use of the credit card. I'm delighted that ITV are celebrating these shows, but also that they have the insight to realise that these formats with the right treatment may not just be nostalgic but relevant to today's audiences."Claudia Rosencrantz, ITV controller of entertainment, said: "The series is a nostalgic look back, with a modern twist provided by two of the biggest current stars on TV.". August is traditionally known to journalists as the silly season, and universally dreaded.
