God Save the Queen

It's been some nine months since a BBC television chief made what's now become a costly error and showed some British journos footage that purported to be Queen Elizabeth storming out of a photo session with Annie Liebovitz. (The session took place at the Queen's request to provide a portrait for the monarch's visit to the United States marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.). This past Friday, as reported in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere, the responsible party, Peter Fincham, finally quit his post as head of BBC1, the network's leading entertainment channel.

The misadventure, now known as "Crowngate", arose when the sequence of the footage proffered to the media by Fincham--who was supervising the making of a documentary by a production company whose head is also now out of a job--seemed to show the Queen first berating Liebovitz, then striding purposefully away in a huff.

In fact, the ruler, perhaps best known stateside via Helen Mirren's compelling portrayal in The Queen, was testily en route to the shoot. (See at 1:45 minutes into the link here the Queen, a female aide, and a somehow extremely dignified-looking fellow following behind with her majesty's considerable train in hand. The giveaway for Royal watchers was the direction she was heading in the palace, toward rather than away from the shoot location.)

I know Liebovitz, herself a benevolent monarch, from more than a couple journalistic excursions. I've seen her startle Bruce Springsteen by lining an arena corridor with dozens of lights to catch his sweaty exit from the stage, and also seen her induce Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren--met by chance as he walked the Manhattan streets in a plaid bondage suit-- to lie down in a Hell's Kitchen gutter for a snap. So last May, there were probably one too many queens in the room.

The Sex Pistols, meanwhile, yesterday reissued their "God Save the Queen" single as a 7" vinyl collector's disk during this 30th anniversary of their Never Mind the Bollocks album release. They're kicking off a U.K. hall tour with a one-off club gig (free to fans who win a lottery) at LA's Roxy October 25. The other day, one could hear guitarist Steve Jones on his Jonesy's Jukebox radio program on L.A.'s 103. 1, snickering "It's for the kids."

The Fincham resignation--initially refused by his bosses--seemed a bit harsh for what The Independent labeled a "monstrous cock-up" but not a hanging offense: "Certainly [Fincham] was very unlucky with timing and context. The Queen walking in the wrong direction came just days after Blue Peter had incurred a 50,000 [pounds sterling] fine in the fake competition winner scandal and issues of trust were starting to ooze out under many BBC doors."

The above-referenced scandal was followed by the Socks and Cookie flap. Nobody's calling it Catgate, but the kids who watch the Blue Peter show had voted for Cookie as the name of a rag doll kitten and the producers decided, with nary a hanging chad, to give the election to the Socks moniker.

An unfortunate byproduct of all this is that the docu may be canned. Said Britain's Telegraph: "There are now serious doubts whether this programme will ever see the light of day. It is understood, however, that both the BBC and RDF still hope the programme, once correctly edited, will be shown. They say it provides a fascinating insight into the Queen's life and is well researched."

Finally, Liebovitz is back in the States and getting raves for --but feeling misgivings over going public with--a series of 200 photos, many of them personal, from the last 15 years. They include shots of her lover Susan Sontag during a battle with cancer.

"We were in Paris burying Susan and it suddenly hit me, I need to share these photographs," she told a Washington news station about the pictures now at the city's Corcoran Gallery of Art (and headed for more cities).

During Sontag's illness, she recalled, ""I took a year off work to be with her in the hospital and I think it made her feel better to see me busy doing something."

(Photograph of Queen Elizabeth in Singapore earlier this year with lion dancers by Jonathan Drake/Getty Images)