For those of you old enough...

[sheworemellowyellow]

...was the Diana/Fergie thing as mental in the media and with the public as MN is mental about Meghan/Kate/everyone else these days?

I was a young teen and paid zero attention to the RF in the 80s. Accounting for a certain amount of frenzy due to the ease of posting on social media versus drumming up chat by way of in-person chatting, and also accounting for the near-total accessibility of online media especially tabloids, did people take these insanely fervently held anti/pro Diana/Fergie sides like they do with Meghan and Kate?

Just done one of my regular name-changes, I've had my arse handed to me on the RF forum plenty of times by the usual suspects. Have been busy with life for a while, just come back to this board and am open-mouthed by how sycophantic/defensive/accusatory/cynical some posts are. Trying to work out WHY people care so much! Is this new? Is this just the royal family wielding its influence? Was it always thus?

I was a child in the 80's/90's. I don't remember much about it but if I look back on past coverage it was clear that the press certainly tried to highlight their differences but there wasn't much they could say about a so-called enemyship as the two were photographed together more often and looked like they got on well enough. Kate and Meghan clearly didn't have much in common and I will say that Kate appears to have colder and more exclusive demeanour than Diana but the press have made her into the wronged victim in this saga, easier to do because she's quieter and less confident. They have exploited the fact that Kate is quite popular and created more division by maligning Meghan (not saying she's without blame but I don't think her worst actions have really involved Kate).

Absolutely this.

Worse, I think.

Furthermore, we went shopping during her funeral as we weren't interested in watching it, and the place (large shopping centre in suburb of SW London) was empty. Many shops only had one person working, and they were out the back watching it on TV.

I felt it more as so many 'friends' had stopped speaking to me because I had said something critical of Diana. It was ALL very very silly.

I don’t think Anne was particularly popular back then. I seem to remember her being deemed as rude.
i do think D&S had a lot of bad media. But they didn’t have the added racism that Meghan has had.

I made a critical comment about Diana at the time of her death, in the presence of an acquaintance I then lost contact with. Forgot all about the comment.

About 20 years later I bumped into the acquaintance and had a chat. My comment about Diana was the main thing she remembered about me!

Ann had a difficult time with the press when she was a young teenager/woman. She hated the press and they hit back. Look up her 'Naff Off' comment.

I think one of the reasons that the press were so critical of Sarah is that Andrew was so popular in the 80's; he was 'the good looking one/ the Falklands hero' and his past girlfriends had been deemed by the press as 'lookers' and Sarah didn't quite fit the expectation. I think the press were even more sexist then, than now and thought Sarah had done quite well.

Interesting. And did people hold onto Diana or Fergie (whichever "side" they were on) as a totem of their personal beliefs, like they seem to with Kate and Meghan?

They were pitted against each other in the media but I don't think people's views were entrenched like they are now, because there was no social media fuelling things and making things worse with echo chambers etc. Back then it was in all the papers and magazines every day for years. Diana generally came off better every time, poor Fergie was often the butt of the joke.

I just never remember anyone ever standing up for Fergie. With social media, at least there are some fans on both sides - for the underdog. But Fergie just got the hairdryer treatment across the board.

for full disclosure I always hugely enjoy any sighting of Fergie. I do remember finding her mildly irritating at the time, on the odd occasion but sympathy usually won out. She’s obviously got terrible people judgement and great capacity for forgiveness and kindness.

And the people who cried and mourned Sarah Everard even though they never knew her, bonkers too?

I've always liked Sarah F. I think she had a terrible childhood - her mother moved to Argentina I think, when Sarah was quite young and she hardly saw her. Her dad (Major Ronald Ferguson) seemed an aloof dad, then remarried and had more children when Sarah was in her late teens. She always just seems like a relentlessly cheerful and optimistic person, which probably explains her lack of ability to judge character.

The media was awful about both of them but at the same time, they (Diana in particular) did some things that are hard to excuse. Time has definitely changed the media perception. No longer are the articles about Diana having affairs with married men and harassing their partners with silent phone calls, but they are refer to her in an almost saintly way.

I can remember poor Fergie getting a constant pasting in the tabloids once she had separated from Andrew. There was the toe sucking incident and then the press was incandescent about her going to the States and using her 'royal status' to make money. I always rather liked her and thought she was really badly treated.

That is definitely what I remember too - didn't she tell a journalist to naff off or something? But due to the passing of time, the fact that she definitely works hard and stays out of silliness and scandal and perhaps the scandals surrounding some others of her family, she's become a small national treasure. Did anyone else have a "Don't Do It, Di" badge in the early 80s?

The press, as usual. set Fergie and Diana up as good girl/bad girl so that Diana was seen as acting with decorum, Fergie as a vulgar and gauche show-off. They approved of Diana's looks and fashion sense (which was good, to be fair!) while Fergie was criticised for being fatter (she wasn't fat, of course) and wearing awful clothes.

Both had relationships with other men while married but Fergie always seemed to get caught in highly embarrassing situations - getting her toes sucked by her 'financial advisor' while sunbathing topless with her small daughters. She was persona non grata for a long time after that.

They were good friends, I think, for many years and supported each other through the difficulties of being royal. But a short while before Diana died she fell out with Fergie - and I think it was connected with the veruca issue Roussette mentioned (Fergie borrowed D's shoes and then told a reporter jokingly that she'd caught verucas from them. D was not amused).

From all I've seen, heard and read over the years I get the impression that Fergie was basically a jolly, kind-hearted person with very poor judgement who liked a joke and wasn't manipulative or sulky. Diana could be these things, though, and was capable of bearing a grudge and falling out with folk.

In fact there was a lot of criticism and anti-Diana feeling in the country in the weeks leading up to her death. I remember a mood of 'she's letting herself down by associating with that shady and louche Al Fayed family'. And we know how that ended. But once she was dead the mood changed immediately to one of national hysteria of a very un-British kind.

I was never a massive Diana fan, but I too was moved by her death and the beautiful funeral service. But I also felt that the Queen was bullied into behaving in a certain way and that was quite an ugly feeling. There was a simple-minded attitude at the time that, unless you were openly weeping and letting it all hang out, you somehow didn't care. Not everyone is like that - least of all the Queen! Even if you're not a monarchist, the sight of people being forced to appear and preferably weep in public is distasteful.

OK I'll bite. (Are you writing an article?) The papers tried to create rivalry but really the pair had a lot in common. Both sloaney girls with aristocracy in their backgrounds. I think Fergie took the heat off Diana with all of her gaffes. Let's face it , some of her fashion choices were 'interesting'. She's actually pretty stylish now. I like Fergie for her inability to hold a grudge. She has reinvented herself as a modern day Barbara Cartland 😂 and has a deal with Mills and Boon.
On Diana. I loved her and wept buckets when she died. Both flawed human beings like all of us OP

These two anecdotes - and yes I appreciate they are only two, and only anecdotes - might suggest that some people DID take the whole thing personally then, before social media. They were emotionally vested. These two people took slights against Diana personally, just like some people take slights against Kate or Meghan personally.

@derxa no, not writing an article (I wish!). I'm normally very good as spotting hidden interests, people's agendas, people's motivations etc. But when it comes to the RF, I just don't get it. Are the media vested in sucking up to the next Queen (Diana or Kate) and use the SILs as handy foils? Why would the media need to do this? The monarchy will continue and go on whether they did or didn't. These days, there are far more salacious celebrities who make reporting on gossip and scandal far easier! If the next Queen weren't so photogenic, would the media behave in the same way? We can't use Camilla as an example because of the back history, but if Kate were a plain Jane, with none of the clothes or hair or grooming or symbols of a luxury lifestyle (like Anne, basically), would the media and the public still fixate?

The comment re Sarah Everard: lots and lots of young women saw themselves in her (including Kate). Just a regular gal, going about her business. This just isn't the case for any women in the RF, and wasn't the case for Diana. So why did so many people lose their minds at the time of her funeral? What WAS it?

I suppose I'm as fixated on understanding it all as some people are on the personalities themselves 😂

Anne got a lot of flack in the early years. She didn’t simper, didn’t seek press attention, and swore like a trooper. The press hated her for a while

These two anecdotes - and yes I appreciate they are only two, and only anecdotes - might suggest that some people DID take the whole thing personally then, before social media. They were emotionally vested. These two people took slights against Diana personally, just like some people take slights against Kate or Meghan personally.

I think that was specific to Diana's death, though. People were invested in Diana's life before that in the way they might be invested in a particularly gripping soap opera, rather than on a deeply personal level.

No, because there were only newspapers and TV. Most of them took turns to hate on each woman, sometimes both at the same time, which was lovely.

The Diana thing was surely - I think - because of the shock of it. She was killed, in her prime, before she found happiness, with the paparazzi in hot pursuit. These photographers would shout “WHORE!” and other insults at her to try to jolt her to get a picture of her looking angry. They physically made her run down streets to get away from them. That is what the school run was like for her. Middle aged men shouting “BITCH!” repeatedly for a reaction shot.

That coupled with the sort of mad unbelievability on a random Sunday morning of finding out she was dead, in Paris (I know I assumed it was the Queen Mum when I saw the newsreader in a black tie flicker into life) when she was splashed large as life over papers days before. She was EVERYWHERE when she was alive - a true superstar in celebrity terms. There is no equivalent today that I can think of.

She died at the height of her beauty, before she ever aged badly or well and was criticised by papers for it and before she had a chance to really make huge PR mistakes or blot her copybook. Thus, her image is preserved despite minor mistakes and long term infidelity.

This .Good explanation.

I think it was a lot harder for the royals back then. They were physically stalked, chased and harassed in a physical way not seen today. And everyone bought newspapers those days and the royal stories were there on the front-page. You couldn't avoid them. Now you go online and you seek the stories out. If you're not interested, you just don't click on a story. But in those days it was physically in front of your face every day.

And Anne had horrible things written about her. Criticism of her looks, her clothes, her personality. She was compared to Diana because Anne, who did loads more work with children than Diana ever did, didn't pick children up. The papers etc denigrated her because she didn't gave photos of her hugging children like Diana did.

There was no getting people to side between Diana or Fergie because it was just a straight pulling to pieces of them both. And it was relentless. There's nothing quite like that today bring pushed in your face every day.

The papers knew a good Rf photo or story sold papers. More papers were sold than now, people got a paper to read at lunch, on the train, the crossword.
Women wanted Di was a fashion icon women wanted to dress like her.
I suppose in a way the RF were like a real life soap opera.

I dont know any one who was upset by her death, was part of the flowers and stuff people wanting to be part of the thing?
She was 36 when she died and 19 when she married, she'd been daily news for 17 years.

Interesting. And did people hold onto Diana or Fergie (whichever "side" they were on) as a totem of their personal beliefs, like they seem to with Kate and Meghan?

Given that you can still see how strongly people still cherish their longheld views about Diana and her innate “goodness” and status as the “Queen of Hearts” even now, more than 25 years after her divorce and then death, to me it’s pretty clear that had her royal life taken place in the era of social media, it would have been pretty similar to today’s febrile atmosphere…