by Vivienne Pratfall’s diary on the specific terror of a reader who takes royal fashion satire considerably more seriously than intended
The office phone rang at eleven this morning, which is unusual in itself, since most of our correspondence arrives by email from readers too polite or too far away to actually dial a number. This reader had dialled a number. This reader was in Aberdeenshire, deeply unimpressed, and wanted to know, at some length, exactly what evidence I had that the future King had “refused” a kilt, as opposed to simply not having worn one on one specific occasion I happened to be writing about.
The Actual Substance of the Complaint
I explained, as gently as the situation allowed, that the piece was satire, that no formal refusal had been documented anywhere, and that the entire premise existed to make a broader point about constitutional continuity being performed through, among other things, sensible trouser choices during Scottish visits. He was not satisfied by this explanation. He felt, genuinely and I think sincerely, that the piece risked being taken as fact by readers less careful than himself, a concern I found difficult to argue with given the call I was currently having.
Where I Landed, Eventually
I did not change the piece. I did, however, spend a genuinely uncomfortable twenty minutes on the phone being reminded, in considerable detail, of the cultural weight a kilt actually carries in Scotland, weight my satirical framing had, admittedly, treated somewhat lightly in service of a joke about parliamentary caution and trouser-based continuity. I think there’s a real, useful distinction between satire that punches at royal PR strategy and satire that risks trivialising something genuinely meaningful to actual Scottish readers, and I’m not entirely certain, twelve hours later, which side of that line Thursday’s piece actually fell on.
What Made This Call Different From Our Usual Complaints
Most reader pushback we receive comes via email, arrives calmly, and gets addressed with a polite, considered reply at our own pace. A phone call carries an entirely different emotional weight, an actual voice, actual frustration, actual silence on the line while I tried to formulate a response that wasn’t simply “it’s a joke,” a defence I’ve come to genuinely dislike deploying because it so often sounds dismissive of a concern that, in this specific case, felt considerably more substantive than dismissive.
The Broader Question This Raised for Me
I’ve been doing this long enough to know satire requires some genuine risk of misreading, that’s structurally part of the form, but this call has left me thinking harder than usual about where cultural specificity intersects with satirical licence, particularly when writing about symbols, like a kilt, that carry meaning well beyond the narrow royal-PR angle I was actually trying to satirise.
How the Rest of the Newsroom Reacted
My colleagues found the whole episode considerably funnier than I did, in fairness, and I’ve now been gently ribbed for the remainder of the day about “the kilt incident,” a nickname I suspect will follow this piece for some time regardless of how the actual underlying question resolves itself.
Where I’ve Landed, For Now
I’ve sent the reader a genuine, non-defensive reply acknowledging his point about cultural weight, without retracting the piece itself, which I still think works as satire aimed squarely at royal image management rather than at Scottish culture. Whether he’s satisfied with that distinction, I genuinely don’t know yet. I’ll update this diary if he calls again.
Why I Keep Coming Back to This One Call
I’ve had readers disagree with me plenty of times, and most of those disagreements roll off fairly easily by the following morning. This one has stayed with me longer than I expected, and I think it’s because he wasn’t simply objecting to a factual inaccuracy, easily corrected, or to a joke he found unfunny, easily shrugged off. He was objecting to something closer to tone, the specific ease with which a piece about high politics can slide past a symbol that carries real, lived cultural weight for people who aren’t the primary intended audience of a London-based satirical outlet.
I don’t think that makes the piece wrong, exactly. I do think it’s made me want to read my own work one more pass through before filing, specifically asking whether any given joke’s target is genuinely the institution I mean to satirise, or whether it’s accidentally landed on something, or someone, considerably less deserving of the punchline. That’s not a rule I think I can apply perfectly every single week under deadline pressure. It is, at least, a question I intend to keep asking myself a little more deliberately than I have been. That’s not a rule I think I can apply perfectly every single week under deadline pressure, but it is, at minimum, a genuine shift in how I intend to read my own copy before it goes out the door. I’ve started, this week specifically, reading each piece one final time purely from the perspective of the reader least equipped to spot the joke, rather than the reader most likely to already agree with me, a small habit that costs perhaps five extra minutes but has already changed one line I’d otherwise have filed without a second thought. Further newsroom diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with the original piece still live at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/
