It is a tale of low politics and high passion. It apparently involves the Queen, her children, the Prime Minister's wife, cocaine, prostitutes, hundreds of thousands of pounds and a man posing as a sheikh who puts on a funny accent. As tabloid journalists say, you couldn't make it up.
The entrapment of the Countess of Wessex by the News of the World has provided an insight into the way that some newspapers still work in 2001. It is also shaking the fabric of the royal family. How on earth did constitutional historians end up on Radio 4 solemnly discussing the fall-out from an interview headlined 'Sophie: My Edward is not gay'?
Almost two months ago, 32-year-old Kishen Athulathmudali, an employee of the Countess of Wessex's Mayfair PR firm R-JH, telephoned Max Clifford, the veteran public relations expert. The account director claimed that R-JH was using Sophie's royal connections to boost its client list.
Clifford approached the Mail on Sunday with the story but when the paper's chief reporter Fiona Barton met Athulathmudali she decided that his claims were not interesting enough to pursue. So Clifford went to the News of the World. Athulathmudali was introduced to Mazher Mahmood, the paper's veteran investigations editor who specialises in 'sting' operations, often dressing as an Arab sheikh in order to entrap criminals.
Mahmood became convinced that R-JH was offering 'coronets-for-cash', pledges of meetings with members of the royal family or invitations to state events in return for business. It was also suggested that potential new clients were being cold-called with invitations to dinner at Bagshot Park, the country home of Edward and Sophie. During the next fortnight, phone calls between Athulathmudali and Murray Harkin, Sophie's gregarious business partner, were recorded. Athulathmudali also went to the firm's Mayfair offices wired with recording equipment.
The News of the World and its editor Rebekah Wade became convinced they had a major story. Not only would the story make a huge splash but it would also satisfy the deeply held republican instincts of its proprietor Rupert Murdoch.
But Mahmood wanted just a little more. Just over three weeks ago he rang Harkin himself, posing as a sheikh who wanted to open an international sports facility in Dubai. The invention was shrewd. R-JH has had a number of sporting clients and Sophie first met Edward when she was promoting a real tennis tournament.
Harkin may now regret his enthusiasm to meet as soon as possible. 'But it all fits in,' says one acquaintance who has known him for years. 'He's a do-it-today, get-on-with-it, push-ahead figure. He wants to try everything. Whenever you're with him, you feel upbeat.' Within 48 hours, two meetings were set up at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, where Mahmood had hired a £1,295-a-day suite.
The meetings were both tape and video-recorded as Harkin enthusiastically offered his potential client 'the usual treatment'. In most PR companies, this is called 'schmoozing'. You offer a glimpse of the best you can offer, whether that be tables at the best restaurants or meetings with the chairman's wife, who happens to be a film star. It is all too easy to imagine what might be offered by keen staff working for Sophie, desperate to bring in business to a company in a notoriously precarious industry.
But when Harkin turned up for the second Dorchester meeting, on a bright spring morning, Mahmood could not believe his luck. Sophie also appeared. Discovering a rather more sophisticated sheikh than she might have been expecting - this one was suave, quietly-spoken and suited - she had a lengthy conversation not only about her plans to promote his sporting centre, but also about various members of her family and politicians. The Queen was 'the old lady', William Hague was 'deformed' and Cherie Booth, the Prime Minister's wife was 'absolutely horrid, horrid, horrid', according to the countess.
Believing she had 'sealed a deal', Sophie then went back to her South Audley Street offices prior to a lunch engagement. She thought she had secured £20,000 a month for two years from the sheikh, almost half a million pounds in business from a morning's work. No wonder she was smiling when she arrived at her desk.
However, by the end of the afternoon of Tuesday 20 March, the clouds had not only gathered over Mayfair, but over Sophie, the future of her business and her role in the royal family. In a telephone call which left her cold, she was advised of what had happened by an employee of the News of the World.
Her first instinct was to phone Sir Robin Janvrin, the Queen's private secretary. He summoned communications secretary Simon Walker, on secondment from British Airways. The pair made an immediate conference call to Guy Black, director of the Press Complaints Commission.
In the meantime, lawyers for R-JH rushed to the High Court in order to secure an injunction against Athulathmudali to prevent him publishing any information he had obtained in the course of his employment.
What happened in the next 48 hours is a subject of bitter dispute between most of the principals involved. Black and Lord Wakeham, chairman of the PCC, visited Janvrin and Walker at Buckingham Palace on the afternoon of Wednesday 21 March. The PCC insist that they gave routine advice - either await publication and deal with the matter afterwards, or come to some accommodation with the News of the World. Both Black and Wakeham insist they do not know exactly what was agreed between Walker and the News of the World in subsequent phone calls.
Whoever said what to whom, the outcome was remarkable. Wade agreed that the paper would hand over the tapes of the conversations with the countess. In return, Sophie would volunteer an interview. The Palace would have complete approval of interviewer, copy and headlines.
Thus Sophie, daughter-in-law of the Queen, ended up sitting in a Buckingham Palace drawing room on the morning of Thursday 22 March with Carole Aye Maung, a News of the World reporter. As Walker looked on, Sophie spoke about her private life, her fertility and, most remarkable of all, Edward's sexuality.
Sometime within the next two days, Wade got cold feet. 'She met our managing director and we're almost certain that Rupert Murdoch was on the phone too,' says a reliable News International source. 'But it just wasn't clear what was going on. In the end, the paper appeared two weeks ago with neither the interview nor the original tapes in it. It was bizarre.'
It was almost certainly Wade's indecision which led to the next remarkable twist in the story. Ten copies of the transcripts of the Mahmood interview had been passed around the News of the World 's Wapping offices. A number of frustrated staff were aware not only of the delay in publication, but also of the explosive nature of what had been suppressed in return for a soft interview with Sophie. It is almost certainly one of those staff who leaked a summary transcript to the Mail on Sunday, determined that their scoop would at least see the light of day there. Amazingly, Wade wavered once more.
By Thursday 5 April, she had decided she would run the Sophie interview after all. She informed Buckingham Palace. On Friday morning, a fax of the proposed piece was sent to the Palace. The front page headline 'SOPHIE: My Edward is NOT gay' was the first part of the piece which appeared slowly from the fax machine in Walker's office.
But when Walker called Wade back to confirm that the interview was acceptable, there was no suggestion that even the headline - the most candid statement ever made by a royal - should be changed. 'One or two minor things were amended,' says the News International source. 'That was all they asked for. It was staggering.'
It was shortly after seeing the proposed article that Sophie - usually ice cool - had a 'wobble'. She penned private notes to Prince Charles, the Blairs, Hague and the Queen apologising for her indiscretions, even though she did not think they would ever reach the public domain. Wrong, yet again.
By Saturday, Buckingham Palace had information too that the Mail on Sunday was going to run details of the original tapes. 'Normally there is relative calm under fire,' revealed one courtier. 'One of the good things about the Palace is that there are people around who have seen it all before. But the atmosphere last weekend was febrile. It was like waiting for shelling to start. People were already rowing with one another over who had been responsible for what.'
The first volley hit the trench just after 10pm, when first editions of the Sunday newspapers arrived. The News of the World was exactly as expected, the Mail on Sunday even worse.
The fallout last week was catastrophic for almost everyone involved. For many observers, the countess's decision was the worst she could possibly have made. She has revealed the most intimate - and, some think, undignified - details of her private life and that of Edward. Any other newspaper will in future be easily able to rake over details of the couple's marriage. The defence is all too predictable. Whether royal or not, they volunteered to put these issues in the public domain. In the meantime, she has also alienated the gaggle of royal reporters on Britain's other tabloid newspapers, who have been told for two years that there was 'categorically no possibility' of the countess giving them an interview.
Sophie has herself become the story, disastrous for any PR. Instead of newspapers concentrating on her clients, their commentators are speculating that she will have to resign from her firm - she insists she will stay. Wade was reported to be 'almost distraught' on seeing that her paper had been scooped by a rival with its own story.
And Murdoch is not pleased either. News International lawyers have been poring over their legal agreement with Sophie, trying desperately to see if they could still print transcripts of what Harkin said to them when she was not present. If Harkin promised 'coronets-for-cash', drugs or prostitutes to his new 'client' - all have been suggested - both his and Sophie's careers may be over. Even if he didn't, both their firm and the royal 'firm' have been made to seem dangerously damaged goods by the events of the past three weeks.
Three days after the story broke, Edward was accused of cashing in on an official foreign trip last year to the Far East to solicit business for his TV production company. Commentators pored once again over his failure to make any mark in the profession of his choice.
It is easy to understand why Downing Street has maintained almost complete silence over the debacle. 'There's simply no need for New Labour modernisers to campaign to down-size the monarchy,' said one Labour MP last night, 'when the royal family is doing so much itself to promote its own destruction.'
Additional research by Herpreet Grewal.
ben.summerskill@observer.co.uk
Useful links
R-JH public relations
Sophie Wessex fan site