More story changes, more errors, more nonsense, more mistakes, but most importantly
MORE MONEY
In this and the following chapter I shall list and explain a number of issues in the book,
for example
- Money
- Schoolboy Howlers
- Changes in the story
- Mistakes, errors, grossly negligent reporting, or downright lies
- Deliberate Confusions
- Nonsense - and libel
- Inconsistencies
***
First permit me to explain the most disgusting and reprehensible episode to which Clarke has so far confessed.
It involves Money. Lots of it
I say the most disgusting and reprehensible, though it ranks alongside the Murat scandal as we shall see,
[see Chapter 43, The Framing of Robert Murat] and in both cases was clearly driven by Clarke’s naked greed without any regard to personal freedoms, dignity, privacy or respect for others.
We may take it as read that the facts did not come into it.
Are those strong words ? You decide.
In his book, at page 36/7 Clarke says
“The opportunity had arisen after an unexpected windfall while working on a feature about the movie, Cold Mountain, filmed in Romania and starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. I’d come across photographs of the leading actors ‘getting intimate’ at the wrap party. They dutifully made the front page of The Sun, paid for our trip to Spain and, by the time the story had been followed up by Hello! Magazine and the rest, had paid for a deposit on a stone farmhouse in Ronda.”
I’d come across . . . in other words Clarke did not take the photos. He wasn’t there. He either bought them or ‘acquired’ them in some other fashion, legal or not.
He then sold them to the papers he mentions, and very possibly wrote the editorial copy which accompanied them, since he was ‘working on a feature’ about the film. His quip “and the rest’ included his favourite Red Top – the Daily Mail, and indicates he was paid by others in the same journalistic swamp.
This all seems fairly normal gutter-press sensationalist and intrusive journalism until we follow up what then happened.
The story alleged a three month extramarital affair between the two, and further that Kidman had actively encouraged Law, who was at that time still married. The photos were included as “proof’.
It was of course, totally untrue, baseless and without foundation.
Kidman sued. She won. Substantial amounts in damages were awarded against the Sun and the Mail. The Sunday Telegraph which had been seduced into printing a version of the story made an unconditional apology.
The British director of the film, Anthony Minghella, was quoted as saying –
“it is all lies.”
“the "poisonous" stories circulating about the pair are in danger of thwarting Kidman's chances of winning an Oscar.”
“the party where the pair were reportedly pictured acting closer than friends was attended by some 30 of the cast.”
"Nobody seems to care about the facts getting in the way of the story.”
"There have been so many poisonous things written about Nicole recently."
REFS AND COPIES IN APPENDIX
Clarke’s photo and story caused the Sun to pay out, the Mail to pay out and the Telegraph to apologise,
but he STILL got enough money to buy a farmhouse in which he is perfectly happy for his wife and children to live, despite its eternal grubby and tainted origins. And he seems both proud of it, and happy to tell the world that it was he who inflicted such immense misery on Kidman and Law, and their respective families.
His wife is not unintelligent and must know the origins of the unexpected windfall of funds used to buy the house she now lives in, and the enormous damage her husband’s lies caused to another woman – like her, a mother – and to her children, not to mention to Law, who also has three children, and was married at the time.
Clarke claims to be protective of his own family.
Other people’s families, it seems, can be destroyed so long as it makes money for him.
She may one day care to reflect on his willingness to sacrifice a mother and her family for personal gain.
Clarke’s children may one day find out for themselves the depths to which their father will sink in the pursuit of personal gain in his ‘profession’.
It is all in the public domain. Google and the internet work in mysterious ways, and children grow up quickly.
Kidman donated her substantial damages to FARA, a charity for abandoned children in Romania.
Clarke kept his contaminated lucre and bought himself a farmhouse.