Repelled by the queen of trash

The Royals by Kitty Kelley Warner, $235 It is quite fun reading this book. The trouble is you feel you need to wash your brain out afterwards.

Kitty Kelley is the uncrowned queen of trash biography, so called because the subject thereof is comprehensively trashed in the process.

Past victims of her books, which dish the dirt and sell like hot cakes, were Jackie O, Liz Taylor, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan. Having read this book, I feel sorry for all of them.

Kelley's publisher describes her as 'the most fearless biographer of our time', and there is something in that. Unfortunately, among the fears over which she triumphs is the fear of putting something down that is not true.

Having seen off fear, Kelley's muse also conquers the inhibitions of taste. She will print anything if it has the 'read me' ingredient. Some of the tales related in this book are, by her own admission, unproven, some of which are probably wrong. There are 'jokes doing the rounds'. There are sly innuendoes. There are a good many mistakes.

This is the book for you if you didn't know - and are interested - that King George VI had trouble reproducing because he couldn't keep his pecker up, and the queen mum uses a colostomy bag. Nothing is too shitty for Kelley. (Sorry. The style is infectious.) We are told, for instance, that 'a few months after their wedding Prince Philip complained that his young wife wanted sex constantly'. He said he was astonished to find her insatiable. 'I can't get her out of my bed,' he said. 'She's always there. She's driving me mad.' Considering the frequently repulsive subject matter, Kelley writes quite well. Only occasionally does the prose sound like a debate in the Australian House of Representatives: 'The royal family was stinking in its own muck, and their problems were as unpleasant as rotting possums under the country's front porch.' The book is a sort of literary World Wrestling Federation extravaganza: entertaining, dramatic, heavyweight and spurious.