BATTLE ROYAL
Breaking: the BBC is forced to acknowledge an oftreviled British red top famous for such dubious exclusives as “Freddie Starr ate my hamster” over a story that arguably helped alter the increasingly bumpy course of the British monarchy. “Dan Wootton of the Sun was the first to report that the couple were thinking of moving overseas,” wrote BBC media editor Amol Rajan, with what reads like slightly gritted teeth. “He got the scoop and deserves credit for that.”
Wootton, formerly of Lower Hutt, now executive editor of the Sun, broke the story that knocked Brexit and the impeachment of US President Donald Trump out of the headlines. The paper that backed Brexit gleefully deployed the term “Megxit” to describe the shock “stepping back” from senior royal status of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. To borrow another of its barking headlines, it was the Sun wot won it.
Recognition at last. “Yes, finally,” sighs Wootton. “Finally!” It must be satisfying. “Oh, my gosh, it’s been so satisfying. The Sun never gets the credit it deserves. When awards are handed out, we’re very often ignored and our rivals will very often win if they fit a more liberal, acceptable agenda.”
He would say that. It’s spoken with the unclouded certainty with which he says everything. Even his “Dan speaking!” on the phone in London, late evening his time because that’s the kind of hours he works, rings with bulletproof self belief and a hint of challenge.
Dan, speaking: he’s lively company, as irrepressible as his paper. He’s been in the UK since and featured as a teenage panellist on TVNZ advice show His precocious extracurricular activities didn’t go down well at Naenae College. “Mum had to write a note in my log book, saying, ‘Dan needs to take period five off school today because he’s going to interview the Prime Minister.’” He interviewed all the party leaders before the 1999 general election. “Everyone agreed to sit on bean bags and play this hipness quiz I developed. Helen Clark did it. Jenny Shipley refused to sit on the bean bag. I was annoyed at the time. I look back now and think, well, she was the Prime Minister. She probably had a right not to sit on the bean bag.” He’s been a pain in the posterior of the famous and powerful on the receiving end of his exclusives ever since.
