<\/p>\n
It was 7pm, two Thursdays ago. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had just been released from police custody when a haunted photo of him, slumped in the backseat of a car, suddenly dropped.<\/b><\/p>\n
The image immediately went viral and was on the front page of most major newspapers the following morning. <\/p>\n
Days later, another image made headlines – albeit a grab from moving footage. This time, it was Lord Mandelson, returning home in a black cab after his arrest on Monday.<\/p>\n
Celebrities, royals and politicians frequently find themselves photographed as they get driven from one location to another.<\/p>\n
They may not be the best photos ever taken, but they can become the most famous.<\/p>\n
The curious phenomenon, described by celebrity crisis PR Lauren Beeching as “distinctly British”, is largely explained by the fact it feels “off guard”.<\/p>\n
“Most public imagery of celebrities, royals or politicians is managed in some way,” she told BBC News.<\/p>\n
“The backseat of a car feels like the moment someone assumes the performance has stopped.”<\/p>\n
But capturing such moments is rarely easy. It requires skill, technique, patience – and a little bit of luck.<\/p>\n
We’ve been speaking to snappers about the art of the “one shot” – and also asking showbiz experts why we’re all so fascinated by the snatched backseat photo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bbc.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was 7pm, two Thursdays ago. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had just been released from police custody when a haunted photo of him, slumped in the backseat of a car, suddenly dropped. The image immediately went viral and was on the front page of most major newspapers the following morning. Days later, another image made headlines – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2307534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2307533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Andrew-Mountbatten-Windsor-and-the-strange-British-phenomenon-of-the-snatched.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307535,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307533\/revisions\/2307535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2307534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}