If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday.
Kate’s uncle wades into bridesmaid dress fitting row
In her blockbuster interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle described the royal family’s refusal to correct a story about her making Kate Middleton cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting as a “turning point” in her relations with the royal family.
ADVERTISEMENT
Yes, were it not for the metaphorical butterfly flapping its wings during a row about whether Meghan’s bridesmaid’s should wear overly warm tights on a summer’s day (Meghan won—they didn’t) one can argue that the royal family might never have been struck by the typhoon of Harry and Meghan’s resignations.
The argument, keen students of royal weddings and teacup-based storms will recall, began when Camilla Tominey reported, some weeks after the nuptials, in the Daily Telegraph, that Meghan had made Kate cry at the fitting. In her Oprah interview, Meghan said it was actually Kate who made her cry, and that the royal institution’s failure to correct the story astonished and shocked her, and made her realize that the institution would never have her back.
Everyone involved has continued to double and triple down on their version of the story ever since.
This Sunday, we hear more on the matter from Kate Middleton’s uncle Gary Goldsmith, a serial entrepreneur who once owned a villa in Ibiza named Maison de Bang Bang, who was caught preparing lines of cocaine for an undercover journalist in 2009. Goldsmith denied taking drugs himself, and the News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood who carried out the sting was later jailed for perverting the course of justice.
Gary was forgiven by Kate and William for the lapse and invited to their wedding in April 2011.
Gary appears to be the latest unofficial mouthpiece to have been wheeled out in the ever-more fractious battle about what exactly happened at that fraught bridesmaid’s dress fitting.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday to promote an ITV documentary next week to mark William and Kate’s tenth anniversary, Gary goes to bat for his niece, saying: “She’s even lovelier on the inside than on the outside. If anyone had a hissy fit, it must have been Meghan. Kate would have been trying to make the peace. I would fight for Kate’s honor until the day I die. She is the most spectacular person I’ve ever met.”
Noting that Gary proffers not one shred of data to support his evidence-free assertion that his niece is a really nice person, which is nonetheless covered at great length by the Mail, one might be inclined to agree with Meghan’s larger point that the British tabloids have little interest in covering her fairly.
Keen students of royal spinning might go one further and detect the interview, in which Gary goes on to comprehensively trash Meghan at great length, as tacit retaliation against an email recently leaked to Omid Scobie, co-author of the sympathetic account of Harry and Meghan’s departure from the Royal Family, Finding Freedom.
Although his book attempted to lower the temperature on the story with a line that, “There were no tears from anyone,” Scobie entered the fray earlier this month in an article for Harper’s Bazaar. He said that in January 2020, Kensington Palace urgently requested that Prince Harry sign a statement against an “offensive” newspaper report stating Prince William “constantly bullied” the Sussexes before their decision to step down.
Scobie said Meghan emailed in response: “Well, if we’re just throwing any statement out there now, then perhaps KP can finally set the record straight about me [not making Kate cry].” Her suggestion was ignored.
By sheer coincidence, Tominey wrote a lengthy first-person piece this weekend in the Telegraph in which she again insisted her version of the story was true and added: “It appears the actual truth ceases to matter once sides have been taken in the unedifying Team Meghan versus Team Kate battle that has divided the internet.”
Production hell
The Hollywood producer hired to head up content at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s new production company, Archewell, owns the rights to a controversial conspiracy movie about Princess Diana’s death.
The Mail on Sunday reports that Ben Browning bought the script to Inquest in 2013 through his old company, Wayfare Entertainment. The movie is listed on his IMDb page, which has been updated to include his new job at Archewell, as a “project in development.”
A source told the Mail on Sunday: “Ben bought the script in 2013, but the status of the project is unclear.”
The film’s plot revolves around a fictional London lawyer, Michael Davies, who is hired by former Harrods boss Mohamed Al-Fayed to probe the death of his son Dodi, the Mail on Sunday reports.
Al-Fayed has publicly stated that Diana and Dodi were planning to marry and that he believes they were murdered because the Queen “did not want a Muslim in the Royal Family.”
Browning’s most recent film, Promising Young Woman, has been nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, including best picture.
Prince Charles and William and Kate appoint new PR bosses
We somehow doubt it will mean we are any closer to discovering the identity of the member of the royal family who had “concerns” about the darkness of the then-unborn Archie’s skin. But the impact of Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview is still reverberating at the royal palaces, where Prince Charles and William and Kate have appointed two new head honchos to run their publicity operations.
Whatever else one can say, Simon Enright—Charles’ new head of PR—and Victoria O’Byrne—who is joining William and Kate—certainly have their work cut out. The Daily Mail reports that both are leaving high-profile jobs within Britain’s National Health Service, the dedication of whose staff has been much hailed during the pandemic, and where a government-proposed 1 percent pay increase for nurses has been met with public criticism. Enright also worked on flagship BBC current affairs show, Newsnight.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Enright was a popular figure. A former BBC colleague told the paper that he was “the dream person to be in this role,” was “a really positive, likable person,” and that, “He’ll be straight, enthusiastic and open with colleagues. This is a very smart hire at a time when the Prince of Wales could do with some help.”
Tom Parker Bowles’ girlfriend dies
Journalist Alice Procope, the girlfriend of Prince Charles’ stepson Tom Parker Bowles, has died of cancer, at 42. The Daily Mail reported that Procope, known professionally as Alice Horton when she worked as a diary journalist, died at home on March 17. The Mail also said Procope’s diagnosis last August had been partly delayed because of the pandemic.
“Tens of thousands” of cancer patients had missed out on treatment “due to delays in diagnosis during the pandemic,” the Mail reported. Figures analyzed by Cancer Research U.K. show that between March and January, referrals for lung cancer fell by 34 percent, the paper said.
“Tom had been blissfully happy with Alice and is devastated that life can be so cruel,” a friend of Parker Bowles’ told the Mail. The couple had been together for two years, following his split from wife Sara Buys. Procope, the granddaughter of the 2nd Viscount Ingleby, had three young children with her estranged husband, Robert Procope, grandson of baronet Sir Robert Wigram, the Mail said.
Kate’s message of sympathy
Kate Middleton sent a “deeply personal” letter to the family of Sarah Everard, the London woman who was murdered after going missing just three miles from where Kate once shared an apartment with her sister Pippa, expressing her sadness and sympathy. A British policeman has been arrested, accused of abducting and killing her.
“The Duchess knows that no words can change what has happened, but wanted to let them know that they and Sarah are in her thoughts,” the source told the Mirror. Earlier this month, Kate made a private visit to a tribute near where Sarah was last seen.
Delete! Delete!
One can only imagine the sinking sensation on seeing the two ticks had turned blue. An unnamed friend of Meghan’s accidentally sent the duchess a voice memo, intended for a different person, complaining that Meghan sends too many emojis, it has been claimed.
The awkward incident allegedly soured the pair's relationship, forcing the duchess and her friend to drift apart. “One of Meghan’s British friends fell out with her because Meghan was writing all these messages with loads of emojis,” a source told the Daily Mail. The friend allegedly recorded a WhatsApp voice note saying, “God, Meghan is so annoying with all her emojis, she keeps sending me all these emojis.” After the message was accidentally sent to Meghan, the source claimed, the friendship cooled.
Cops question queen’s grandson after 740-km trip to see woman
Peter Phillips, son of Princess Anne, has been “issued advice” by police after traveling 740km to see a married woman. “Angry locals” shopped Phillips to the police for allegedly contravening COVID travel restrictions.
Phillips had traveled from Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucestershire where he lives to the woman’s home in St Cyrus, Aberdeenshire. She has separated from her husband, the Sun reported, and she and Phillips had reconnected at a school reunion event. Phillips split from his wife Autumn last year.
Phillips claimed he was on a business trip. One local source told the paper: “It seems wrong he has traveled here from England, whatever the circumstances. Scotland is closed, and if you flew here you would have to quarantine for ten days.”
A spokesman for Phillips told the Sun that Phillips had traveled on business with his company XL Medical, which provides rapid Covid tests, adding: “We do not comment on details or circumstances of Mr Phillips’ accommodation when traveling on business.”
A Police Scotland spokeswoman told the Sun: “At around 6:40 p.m. on Friday 26 March, 2021, police received a report of a potential breach of coronavirus regulations at a property in St Cyrus, Montrose. Officers attended, spoke to the occupants and found no breaches of legislation.”
Frozen in time
Kate Middleton, patron of the National Portrait Gallery, and a keen photographer herself, has written a foreword for a book of photographic portraits recording Britain’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate began the project with the last year, inviting people to submit photos taken during Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown.
A panel of judges, including Kate, chose 100 portraits from over 31,000 entries, to go in the book. “Through ‘Hold Still,’ I wanted to use the power of photography to create a lasting record of what we were all experiencing to capture individuals’ stories and document significant moments for families and communities as we lived through the pandemic,” Kate wrote in the introduction to the book, the Telegraph reports.
This week in royal history
The Queen Mother died on March 30, 2002, at Royal Lodge, Windsor. Known for her diaphanous dresses, and her gin-swilling Spitting Image caricature (with Midlands accent), she was 101, and had been queen (married to King George VI) from 1936 to 1952. After Buckingham Palace was bombed in 1940, during the Second World War, the “Queen Mum” famously told a policeman: “I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”
Unanswered questions
Just what grand PR plan do Charles and William and Kate’s new reps have to revive royal reputations and answer the questions that will not go away after Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview—principally, which royal family member had “concerns” over the darkness of unborn-baby Archie’s skin?
