She also signed. And signed. Thousands queued in Britain for the Beverly Hills girl to autograph their copies of Andrew Morton’s “Monica’s Story,” published this month in 10 countries. Lewinsky and Morton, who last week was busy promoting the book in the States, split the book’s $1.5 million-plus advance. Lewinsky also received $660,000 for her interview with Channel 4 and will get about 75 percent of the royalties–which, since the show’s been sold in 38 countries, could bring her at least an additional million. A photo spread of Lewinsky at her father’s Los Angeles home (Monica knits! Monica pours coffee!) in a string of Spanish-owned glossies brought the Lewinsky family an additional $500,000.
Why the interest? Part prurience, part geopolitics. “America is the world’s only superpower,” explains Renaud Bombard, the French publisher of “Monica’s Story.” “What concerns America concerns us.” British publisher Michael O’Mara has a more sentimental spin. He sees the story as a modern fairy tale, whose cast of characters includes a “young, innocent girl,” a “prince, who has a wife,” and the “evil Knight of the Starr.” This being the ’90s, “happily ever after” is replaced by another closing rite: a book tour. NEWSWEEK followed Lewinsky around Britain on her first week of European signings.
Harrods, noon, March 8 Two floors above the Di and Dodi memorial fountain, a thousand people wait to see Monica. The queue snakes around Travel Books, through Garden Furniture and into Appliances. It’s a line so long it has its own celebrities. Harrods issues a press release on “The First Five Customers to Have Their Books Signed.” Buyers in line debate the Meaning of Monica, clutching copies of her story. “She’s become such a focus of world history,” says John McCloud, a Sussex-based software designer. “What’s the reason for it, metaphysically?” Virginian Michael Mitchell, 19, isn’t sure, but reckons there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: “The wedding ring is sacred and should not be violated.” “Er, not necessarily,” responds McCloud.
A few yards away, the oak signing table is flanked by massive urns of lilies. Blue-suited staff members frantically sweep the red carpet, as the 200-some journalists jockey for space. When Monica arrives, sleek in a navy pantsuit and heels, bagpipes serenade her, flashbulbs pound like strobe lights and the paparazzi yell. She signs a few books and then leaves the room, in what the tabloids will call tears and her press spokeswoman will call flu symptoms. Minutes later she’s back and signing. Next door a crowd waits for people to emerge with their trophies. The lucky 450 vamp for the cameras, holding their books above their heads. For a split second, they are stars themselves.
Borders, Oxford Street, 12:30 p.m., March 9 At Borders the next day, the Monica line starts at 9 a.m. By midafternoon, 2,000 people will have filed through it. Chet Baker croons “Let’s Get Lost,” and shop assistants and bobbies try to calm the crowd. But when Monica arrives with her British bodyguard, publicity agent and David Crombie, Michael O’Mara’s U.K. sales director, there’s still a mosh. People clamber onto shoulders and ladders, crushing into the shelves of taped Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novels.
The Europeans in line seem to have a collective crush on Monica. Some bring teddy bears, others chocolates. Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse books, waits in line to tell her he wishes he were 45 years younger. One woman says she identifies with Lewinsky’s weight problems. Another says she knows how the girl feels because she, too, is Jewish. For the Americans, eagerness is mixed with sheepishness. “Take a picture of me,” shouts one woman. “Just so I have proof that I’m not the only insane person here.” She’s not: during the week, more than 29,999 others will buy the book in Britain. In the United States, “Monica’s Story” is No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list. In France and Germany, a second printing is ordered within days of publication. In Norway and Finland, Monica’s story flies off the shelves. If reading “Monica’s Story” is, as one girl in line at Borders says, “like checking out road kill,” then Lewinsky is causing a global traffic jam.
Books Etc., Bayswater, 6:30 p.m. A woman in a black suit is looking at greeting cards in a mall. Nothing more banal, except that she is “that woman” and the store is selling just one book tonight: her biography. A crowd is smashed against the window, and beyond them are 6,000 others–Iraqis, Kurds, Sicilians and Japanese. Says one Thai man: “Maybe I have a chance to be a small part of world history.”
Monica has found a new pen–a Pilot V, which Crombie, Michael O’Mara’s sales director, hopes will speed up the autograph process by 20 signatures an hour. Not that Crombie is complaining. Monica has been averaging about 500 books an hour. “Faster than Thatcher,” says Crombie, who promoted the former prime minister’s autobiography, as well as Charlton Heston’s. Monica is quick–and quiet, as there are two partial restrictions on her free speech, one from Kenneth Starr, and the other from Channel 4, which banned Lewinsky from doing other television interviews for two weeks after its own show aired.
Despite the avid fans and constant media attention, Europe still holds humiliations. Monica and her handlers have grown wary of the press since a Daily Telegraph profile painted her as “vain and shallow,” possessing a “leaden gait” and ankles “even thicker than Hillary’s.” Back in Bayswater, where Monica signs and smiles, a man breaks into the mall, wearing a rubber Clinton mask and a large white strap-on phallus. The crowd whistles and claps as two bobbies drag him out.
Waterstone’s, City of London, March 10 Monica sits signing books at the spot where Pets meets Science Fiction and Cookery. Brash young pinstriped bankers come in packs. To speed queues along, it’s been decided that Monica won’t sign dedications. “Have your books open to the page with ‘Monica’s Story’ on it,” yell the shop assistants. “Will you just write ‘Love to Colin’?” pleads one gray-haired fan. “I’m sorry,” says Monica, just as she’s said hundreds of times by now. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
Waterstone’s, Oxford, noon, March 11 Monica’s late, and the rumor is that she won’t leave her hotel because she’s scared of the paparazzi outside. The night before, she enjoyed a shard of normal life: Andrew Morton called a friend with a son at Oxford, who organized a dinner for Monica with seven students.
Inside the bookstore it’s tense. The press are told not to talk to Monica, so for a few minutes the only noise is the clicking of cameras and the buzz of tills. Then, a lone voice: “What do you think about today’s news that the Clintons might be splitting up, Monica?” No reply.
WH Smith, Bristol, 6:30 p.m. The queue may be women and teenage girls, but the impromptu crowd is young and male. There are jokes about cigars and “distinguishing characteristics.” A man in an Iron Maiden T shirt holds up an obscene sign. As the men hoist their camcorders, the mob starts a ragged howl, “Mo-ni-ca, Mo-ni-ca.” Small wonder that Monica has asked for a bodyguard in every country.
There’s no sense of whether Monica might get a bit more freedom in Germany, her next stop–after a quick trip back to the States for an Oscars party. The Germans have offered two bodyguards, and her sightseeing plans are being tightly guarded. Her Parisian publisher expects “a craze” when Monica signs books on the Champs-Elysees at the end of the month. Her Norwegian publisher wants to take her skiing, and Rome hopes for a visit from “La Lewinsky” in April, when she may or may not choose to go to the “Monica Center” at a gay wine bar, Caffee Latino. There the window display is a soiled blue dress, and patrons wear black berets and hold “There’s Something About Monica” nights in her honor.
But Monica’s not camp for everyone in Europe–yet. In Salisbury last week a preacher entertained the 500-strong crowd outside a bookshop. “There’s another book that’s even better than ‘Monica’s Story’,” he cried, raising a battered Bible above his head. “It’s got all the same intrigues, and it’s also a best seller.” Possibly. But who wants a book with an ending we already know? “Monica’s Story” may be out, but her celebrity life is far from over.
The Players: Roland Dumas, a foreign minister under Mitterrand, now chief of France’s constitutional court, and Christine Deviers-Joncour.
Time Frame: 1987 to 1997.
Consequences: Dumas got Deviers-Joncour a job, commissions and credit cards. She bought him expensive gifts but was later incarcerated for corruption. He wasn’t. Couple now forbidden to see each other.
Update: Deviers-Joncour has received death threats and wrote a book, ‘The Whore of the Republic.’
BRITAIN
The Players: Robin Cook, Britain’s foreign secretary, and Gaynor Regan, his secretary.
Time Frame: 1994 to 1998, after which they married.
Consequences: Cook embarrassed the triumphant Blair administration; his ex-wife wrote a tell-all book.
Update: Cook and Regan still happily married.
The Players: Cecil Parkinson, secretary of state for trade and industry, and Sara Keays, a secretary.
Time Frame: Early 1980s.
Consequences: Parkinson chose to stay with his wife; he resigned, tarnishing the landslide 1983 Tory victory.
Update: Parkinson ultimately returned to politics; Keays cares for Flora, their daughter.
GREECE
The Players: Andreas Papandreou, popular prime minister, and Dimitra (Mimi) Liani, an airline attendant.
Time Frame: Mid-1980s until his death, in 1996.
Consequences: He lost the 1989 election but returned to power in 1993 with Mimi as wife and chief of staff.
Update: Mimi wrote a book about their relationship and has devoted her life to his legacy.
