“People see what they think they want to see,” explains a director, who has been creating her famous faux celebrity shoots for 15 years, after a scrumage in a London park to see the “royal baby”.
“There is a wall of myth around royals and A-list celebrities . We see them on magazine covers so often that we think we know them intimately, and we want to learn more. I like to burst that bubble a little.”
We are rabbits in the headlights, a gold strike in the Klondike, the centre of a British Lions scrum. Paparazzo-style cameras zoom in from everywhere, mobile phones are held aloft, mobs of screaming tourists in bikinis descend, doting abaya-ed mummies prove unable to resist a peek, even large Swedish males with plaster casts rush towards the pram.
We circle it and prepare to make a stand.
“Does this happen often?” I ask the duchess, who seems more embarrassed than distressed. “Well, you never know how people are going to react,” she says, with a surprising Essex twang.
And with that the couple trot off, rolling the pram and smiling at the shrieking crowd, as a German TV crew documents their every step and a slender, elegant woman in black calls out instructions.
The wave of royal mania recedes as sharply as a turning spring tide (though the giggles intensify), the 100-plus fans suddenly realising their eyes have deceived them. “Lookalike!” the cries go up. These lucky few have just been subject to a walking, talking Madame Tussauds show: an Alison Jackson photoshoot.
How we have managed to fool strangers into believing the royal baby has not only been born, but that the royal couple would potter outside Kensington Palace without so much as a bodyguard, is staggering – but not to Jackson.
And she succeeds in making us suspend our disbelief at apparent shots of George Bush struggling with a Rubik’s cube in the Oval Office or the queen on the loo – and actively enjoy our voyeurism. – The Daily Telegraph
