Notice
Thread ordered by most liked posts - View normal thread.

Flossyposse

Member
New threat title suggestion:

Commissioner Harry should start with his wife, disinformation is her whole life!
 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Haha
Reactions: 99

Mrs_Darcy

Member
I do not see how the Harkles are appealing to any serious company. Anyone who has looked at their behaviour for the last couple of years will note the following:

-They are conniving and will lie for their gain. (That IMO started when they made the British taxpayer and the Royal family for their huge wedding etc. on the assumption that they would become full-time working-royals when in reality they were already plotting Megxit)
-They are professional victims (The Oprah-interview: Nothing is their fault)
-They employ one of the most ruthless PR-companies in the world (Sunshine Sachs) and deflect all criticism of their actions by attacking the people criticising them
-They are incapable of maintaining long-term relationships (How many family-members and old friends do these two have combined, that they are still speaking to?)
-They start everything and finish nothing (One Archwell-podcast and no output for Netflix, even though they deals have been in place for a long time)
-They do some shady dealings with money (Travalyst, the missing Disney-money, Sussex-Royal)
-They are the biggest hypocrites I know (kindness, environment etc.)
-Their entitlement is breathtaking (Megxit-terms)
-They will publically trash you and lie about you, if they do not get their way
-They blackmailed Harry's family and Thomas Markle
-They show no empathy for sick family-members (Prince Philip and Thomas Markle)
-They constantly try to overshadow people they work with
-They have a high turnover of staff
-They are untalented, but have a huge opinion of their talent
-They do not keep to any agreements (Megxit-terms)
-Both of them consider a supporting-role beneath their dignity (Harry said being the spare was being "subservient"
-They use the charities they are associated with for publicity
-They have no trouble harming their charities, when it is in their interest (Invictus-fundraiser being cancelled due to their deal with Netflix)
-They are not grateful towards their families, even though they have benefitted tremendously from them in the past

In short: They are greedy, entitled, hypocritical, not reliable, back-stabbing bullies, who seem to see their relationships and charities as a means of enriching them.

I can see, that some start-ups see them (or rather Prince Harry) as a good way to gain recognition, but in my opinion their character-flaws make them extremely unappealing spokespeople. Already a lot of people are saying, that a person who could get his suicidal wife help, because he was ashamed of the stigma, should not be associated with anything to do with mental health.

If the charity-commision finds, that they embezzled charity-money, even Sunshine Sachs will not be able to save their public image.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 94

AnderbeauAnderbeau

Chatty Member
I doubt she'll ruin Camilla. If anything, it'll be the other way round.

I'm in the middle of Tom Bowers book on Boris and there's an anecdote in there about when BoJo was Mayor and failed to open some rape crisis centres as he'd promised. He was summoned by Camilla to Clarence House and apparently she grabbed his wrist and said "You and me, upstairs now", and told him about how she'd been assaulted on a train when she was 17, took her shoe off and hit her attacker in the nuts. And said if he financed the centres she would open them. Afterwards, Boris apparently said to his aide, "Oh God, what a woman!"

I can't see Camilla standing by and letting Meghan and Harry walk all over the Monarchy without bending Charles' ear about it.
Not unrelated to this anecdote, there was a lovely story about Camilla that someone here posted several threads back. She was visiting a sexual assault treatment unit and asked if women were given toiletries to use after examination. She was told that there wasn't enough money to provide individual wash bags only communal use toiletries
She went away and contacted Boots and set up a contract with them to provide individual packs of toiletries which she funds herself. I think this tells you a lot about what kind of person she is. This story, to my knowledge, wasn't publicised. It was a word of mouth story from a friend of the tattler. Goodness knows what other kind deeds she does that we don't know about.

She seems to be a very strong woman who is kind and warmhearted but ruthless too (in a good way). She is the perfect right hand woman for Charles and I can't see her taking any bs from Meghan. Charles has a good woman by his side in this crisis.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 80

ChipDex

VIP Member
She is after Camilla. Most people read only headlines, and have only emotional responses, facts are.. bendable.
If she succeeds in ruining Camilla, Charles is gone from the throne. The next stage would be simply screaming loud enough that William cant be king because the succession is pointless, because well.. Charles. I sound like a conspiraloon, but that was clear from the start.
I doubt she'll ruin Camilla. If anything, it'll be the other way round.

I'm in the middle of Tom Bowers book on Boris and there's an anecdote in there about when BoJo was Mayor and failed to open some rape crisis centres as he'd promised. He was summoned by Camilla to Clarence House and apparently she grabbed his wrist and said "You and me, upstairs now", and told him about how she'd been assaulted on a train when she was 17, took her shoe off and hit her attacker in the nuts. And said if he financed the centres she would open them. Afterwards, Boris apparently said to his aide, "Oh God, what a woman!"

I can't see Camilla standing by and letting Meghan and Harry walk all over the Monarchy without bending Charles' ear about it.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Wow
Reactions: 78

Flossyposse

Member
The more I think about her talking about her "intimate, just for us" not a wedding, versus the "spectacle" of their wedding day was actually really insulting. She chose those words carefully, I'm sure.

We - as taxpayers- paid £32m for that "spectacle". And now she talks about the framed vows from the non wedding in the garden with misty eyes, and dismisses her costly wedding in entirety...

She could easily have had a quiet wedding - but we all know she loved having the eyes of the world on her, and to be able to invite half of Hollywood.

The flowers around the door as she left probably cost more than most people's entire wedding...how dare she not acknowledge what the people of the UK gave her? She really is a "what Freda says" :mad:
I agree with this 100%. It seemed quite inconsequential in the interview, but it’s been bugging me ever since and I couldn’t quite work out why. The way she talked about it in such a dismissive way, dripping with disdain, as if it was something she was forced to do for other people, when in reality she maxed out the nation’s credit card with a ridiculous A-lister guest list full of people she barely knew but wanted to get to know, and binned off her family and Harry’s old mates in the process. No room for her cousins in a wedding of 800 people??

She could have got married anywhere she wanted, literally she could have had it on a beach with 5 people. No-one held a gun to her said and said you must spend £32,000,000 of UK taxpayers’ money. Would it have fucking killed her to acknowledge that fact in the interview and say, god forbid, ‘thank you’?! Or take the opportunity to publicly thank the RF, especially Charles for stepping in and walking her down the aisle?

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so completely up their own arse. Didn’t they claim sometime after the wedding that the day brought £1bn of revenue into the UK? That’s the reality right there, they’re not grateful to us, they think WE should be grateful for them.

I think that’s the whole issue for them and why they left and keep moaning about not getting security, titles, fawning press coverage - you could see it in the interview when Harry was saying things changed after their wonderful Australia tour that ‘brought back memories’ and created jealousy in the RF at how amazing Smeggy was at the job. They think they’re the best fucking thing to hit the UK in history and we should all be grovelling at their brilliance, and when they were put back in their places in the RF hierarchy they didn’t like it, so stuck two fingers up and left. Honestly, what a pair of self-obsessed dicks, good riddance frankly.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Wow
Reactions: 77

catp

Active member
The more I think about her talking about her "intimate, just for us" not a wedding, versus the "spectacle" of their wedding day was actually really insulting. She chose those words carefully, I'm sure.

We - as taxpayers- paid £32m for that "spectacle". And now she talks about the framed vows from the non wedding in the garden with misty eyes, and dismisses her costly wedding in entirety...

She could easily have had a quiet wedding - but we all know she loved having the eyes of the world on her, and to be able to invite half of Hollywood.

The flowers around the door as she left probably cost more than most people's entire wedding...how dare she not acknowledge what the people of the UK gave her? She really is a "what Freda says" :mad:
 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Sick
Reactions: 76

ResidentMerkin

VIP Member
thank you to @Baguette for the poll idea - from whence came the sparkly new title - a follow on from the

Zara had her baby like a true warrior, managing to overshadow the Harkles' job announcements - that goodness.
Welby is still hiding in the CofE sickbay - dodging the heretic Harkles' lies and fabrications
Chuck and Cams are in Greece
Hazno is getting himself a place in Aspen with Rupert Murdoch's daughter-in-law, where he will be shelling out Athena cat posters on misinformation and self-optimisation.
Megsy apparently is unemployable even though she is the only one of the two with the legal right to work in the US.

Ooo looky! I've been upgraded to VIP status! despite my transgressions!!! Yay!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Haha
Reactions: 76

cayenne35

Member
Are you able to cut and paste?
I can't see behind the paywall.
.
Harry, Meghan and me: my truth as a royal reporter
I've covered elections and extremism, but nothing compares to the vitriol I've received since I started writing about the Sussexes

ByCamilla Tominey, ASSOCIATE EDITOR27 March 2021 • 6:00am
It is probably worth mentioning from the outset that I never, ever, planned to become a royal reporter. I mean, who does? It’s one of those ridiculous jobs most people fall into completely by accident.

I certainly wasn’t coveting the position when I first found out how bonkers the beat could be after covering Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005. Desperate for ‘a line’ on what went on at the reception, journalists were reduced to flagging down passing cars in Windsor High Street and interrogating the likes of Stephen Fry about whether they’d had the salmon or the chicken.

Watergate, this wasn’t.

Yet when my former editor called me into his office shortly afterwards and offered me the royal job ‘because you’re called Camilla and you dress nicely’, who was I to refuse?

Having planned to get married myself that summer, and start a family soon afterwards, I looked to the likes of Jennie Bond and Penny Junor and figured it would be a good patch for a working mother as well as being one I could grow old with. Unlike show business, when celebrities are ‘in’ one minute and ‘out’ the next, the royals would stay the same, making it easier to build – and keep – contacts.


So if you’d told me that 16 years later, I would find myself at the centre of a media storm over a royal interview with Oprah Winfrey, I’d have probably laughed in your face. First of all, only royals like Fergie do interviews with Oprah. And since when did journalists become the story?

Yet as I have experienced since the arrival of Meghan Markle on the royal scene in 2016 – a move that roughly coincided with Twitter doubling its 140-character limitation to 280 – royal reporters like me now find themselves in the line of fire like never before.

We are used to the likes of Kate Adie coming under attack in the Middle East, but now it is the correspondents who write up events like Trooping the Colour and the Royal Windsor Horse Show having to take cover from the keyboard warriors supposedly defending the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘truth’.

Accusations of racism have long been levelled against anyone who has dared to write less than undiluted praise of Harry and Meghan. But even I have been taken aback by the vitriol on social media in the wake of the couple’s televised two-hour talk-a-thon, in which they branded both the Royal family and the British press racist while complaining about their ‘almost unsurvivable’ multimillionaire lives at the hands of the evil monarchy. And all while the rest of the UK were losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a global pandemic.

Having covered Brexit, general elections and stories about Islamic extremism, I’ve grown used to being sprayed with viral vomit on a fairly regular basis, but when you’ve got complete strangers trolling your best friend’s Instagram feed by association? That’s Britney Spears levels of toxic.

Having a hind thicker than a rhino’s, it wasn’t the repeated references to my being ‘a total c—’ that particularly bothered me, nor even the suggestion that I should have my three children put up for adoption. At one point someone even said it would be a good idea for me to drink myself to death like my mother, about whose chronic alcoholism I have written extensively.

No, what really got me was the appalling spelling and grammar. I mean, if you’re going to hurl insults, at least have the decency to get my name right.

Yet in order to understand just how it has come to pass that so-called #SussexSquaders think nothing of branding all royal correspondents ‘white supremacists’ regardless of who they write for, or sending hate mail to our email addresses, offices – and in some cases, even our homes – it’s worth briefly going to back to when I first broke the story that Prince Harry was dating an American actor in the Sunday Express on 31 October 2016. Headlined: ‘Royal world exclusive: Harry’s secret romance with TV star’, the splash revealed how the popular prince was ‘secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner’.

Despite my now apparently being on a par with the Ku Klux Klan for failing to acknowledge Meghan as the next messiah, it was actually not until the fifteenth paragraph of that original article that the ‘confident and intelligent’ Northwestern University graduate was described as ‘the daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch and Irish descent’.

Call me superficial, but I was genuinely far more interested in the fact that Harry ‘I-come-with-baggage’ Wales was dating a former ‘briefcase girl’ from the US version of Deal or No Deal than the colour of her skin. A ginger prince punching well above his weight? This was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Little did I know then that covering the trials and tribulations of these two lovebirds would turn into such a nightmare.

The online hostility began bubbling up about eight days after that first story, when Harry’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf issued an ‘unprecedented’ statement accusing the media of ‘crossing a line’.

‘His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment’, it read, referencing a ‘smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments’. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, had apparently been besieged by photographers, while bribes had been offered to Meghan’s ex-boyfriend along with ‘the bombardment of nearly every friend, coworker, and loved one in her life’.


Suffice to say, I did feel a bit guilty. Although I hadn’t written anything remotely racist or sexist, I had started the ball rolling for headlines like the MailOnline’s ‘(Almost) straight outta Compton’ (referencing a song by hip-hop group NWA about gang violence and Meghan’s upbringing in the nearby LA district of Crenshaw), along with her ‘exotic’ DNA (which I subsequently called out, including on This Morning in the wake of ‘Megxit’ in January last year).

Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a highly favourable account of the Sussexes’ departure from the Royal family, written with their cooperation last summer, would later insist that the couple knew the story of their relationship was coming out and were well prepared for it.

I can tell you categorically that they weren’t, since I did not even put a call into Kensington Palace before we went to press for fear of it being leaked. (I did later discuss this with Harry, when I covered his trip to the Caribbean in November 2016, and to be fair he was pretty philosophical, agreeing it would have come out sooner or later. But that was before the former Army Captain decided to well and truly shoot the messenger, latterly telling journalists covering the newly-weds’ tax-payer-funded October 2018 tour of Australia and the south Pacific: ‘Thanks for coming, even though you weren’t invited.’)

The royal press pack is the group of dedicated writers who cover all the official engagements and tours on a rota system, in exchange for not bothering the royals as they go about their private business. It was a shame this ragtag bunch, of which I am an associate member, was never personally introduced to Meghan when the couple got engaged in November 2017.

I still have fond memories of a then Kate Middleton, upon her engagement to Prince William in November 2010, showing me her huge sapphire and diamond ring following a press conference at St James’s Palace with the words, ‘It was William’s mother’s so it is very special.’

I replied that she might want to consider buying ‘one of those expanding accordion style file holders’ to organise all her wedding paperwork. (Reader, I had given birth to my second child less than four months earlier and was still lactating.)

Not meeting Meghan did not stop royal commentators like me writing reams about her being ‘a breath of fresh air’ and telling practically every TV show I appeared on that she was the ‘best thing to have happened to the Royal Family in years’.

As the world followed the joyous news of the Windsors’ resident strip billiards star having finally found ‘the one’, the couple enjoyed overwhelmingly positive press culminating in their fairy-tale wedding in May 2018, which we headlined ‘So in love’ above a picture of the bride and groom kissing. I tweeted the wedding front page, along with the original story breaking the news of their relationship with the words, ‘Job done’. Yet, as Meghan would later point out in a glossy Santa Barbara garden, that was by far the end of the story.

According to the Duchess’s testimony before a global audience of millions, the seeds for their royal departure were actually sown by an article I wrote in November 2018 suggesting she made Kate cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting for Princess Charlotte.

Claiming the ‘reverse happened’, the former Suits star railed, ‘A few days before the wedding she was upset about something, pertaining to, yes, the issue was correct, about flower-girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.’

She then went on to criticise the palace for failing to correct the story – suggesting that royal aides had hung her out to dry to protect the Duchess of Cambridge.

All of which left me in a bit of a sticky situation. As I told Phillip Schofield on This Morning the following day, ‘I don’t write things I don’t believe to be true and that haven’t been really well sourced.’

Having seemingly been completely bowled over by Meghan’s version of events, Schofe then went for the jugular: ‘I have to say, though, that’s all addressed in that interview, isn’t it, because she [Meghan] couldn’t understand why nobody stood up for her?’

Yet someone had stood up for her, on that very same This Morning sofa: me.

As I told Phil and Holly on 14 January 2019, as more reports of ‘Duchess Difficult’ started to emerge, ‘I think she [Meghan] is doing really well, she looks amazing, she speaks well. She has played a blinder.’

So you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite understand why Meghan didn’t feel the need to correct this supposedly glaring error once she had her own dedicated head of communications from March 2019 – or indeed when she ‘collaborated’ with Scobie, who concluded in his bestselling hagiography that ‘no one cried’?

Moreover, how did the Duchess know a postnatal Kate wasn’t ‘left in tears’? And if she doesn’t know, what hope has the average troll observing events through the prism of their own deep-rooted insecurities?

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.

Make no mistake, there are abject morons at both extremes spewing the sort of bile that, ironically, makes most of the media coverage of Harry and Meghan look like a 1970s edition of Jackie magazine.

It perhaps didn’t help my case that the day before the interview was aired in the US, I had written a lengthy piece carefully weighing up the evidence behind allegations of ‘outrageous bullying’ that had been levelled against Meghan during what proved to be a miserable 20 months in the Royal family for all concerned.

The messages – to my Twitter feed, my email, my website and official Facebook page – ranged from the threatening, to the typical tropes about media ‘scum’ and the downright bizarre. Some accused me of being in cahoots with Carole Middleton, with whom I have never interacted, unless you count a last-minute Party Pieces purchase in a desperate moment of poor parental planning.

camilla tominey twitter

CREDIT: Courtesy of @camillatominey
camilla tominey twitter

CREDIT: Courtesy of @camillatominey
camilla tominey twitter

CREDIT: Courtesy of @camillatominey
Another frequent barb was questioning why the press wasn’t writing about that ‘pedalo’ [sic] Prince Andrew instead – seemingly oblivious to the fact that no one would know about the Duke of York’s links to Jeffrey Epstein if it wasn’t for the acres of coverage devoted to the story by us royal hacks over recent years.

It didn’t matter that I had repeatedly torn the Queen’s second, and, some say, favourite son to pieces for everything from his propensity to take his golf clubs on foreign tours to that disastrous Newsnight interview.

Contrary to the ‘invisible contract’ Harry claims the palace has with the press, royal coverage works roughly like this: good royal deeds = good publicity. Bad royal deeds = bad publicity. We effectively act as a critical friend, working on behalf of a public that rightly expects the royals to take the work – but not themselves – seriously.

So when a royal couple preaches about climate change before taking four private jets in 11 days, it is par for the course for a royal scribe to point out the inconsistency of that message. None of it is ever personal, as evidenced by the fact that practically every member of the monarchy has come in for flak over the years.

If Oprah wasn’t willing to point out the discrepancies in Harry and Meghan’s testimony, surely it is beholden on royal reporters to question how the Duchess had managed to undertake four foreign holidays in the six months after her wedding, in addition to official tours to Italy, Canada, and Amsterdam, as well as embarking on a lengthy honeymoon, if she had ‘turned over’ her passport?

While no one would wish to undermine the extent of her mental health problems, could it really be true that she only left the house twice in four months when she managed to cram in 73 days’ worth of engagements, according to the Court Circular, in the 17 months between her wedding and the couple’s departure to Canada?

And what of the ‘racist’ headlines flashed up during the interview purporting to be from the British press, when more than a third were actually taken from independent blogs and the foreign media? The UK media abides by the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Code of Conduct ‘to avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race’, as well as by rigorous defamation laws. And rightly so – the British press doesn’t always get it right. But social media is the Wild West by comparison, publishing vile slurs on a daily basis with impunity.
Some therefore find it strange that such a litigious couple would claim to have been ‘silenced’ when they have made so many complaints, including resorting to legal action, over stories they claim not to have even read. There is something similarly contradictory about a couple accusing the tabloids of lacking self-reflection while refusing to take any blame at all – for anything.
In any normal world, informed writing on such matters would be classed as fair comment, but not, seemingly, on Twitter where those completely lacking any objectivity whatsoever are only too willing to virtue signal and manoeuvre.
As the trolling reached fever pitch in the aftermath of the interview, veteran royal reporter Robert Jobson of the Evening Standard called me. ‘Don’t respond to these freaks,’ he advised. ‘It’s getting nasty out there. Watch your back!’
Yet despite my general sense of bewilderment at the menacing Megbots, I can’t say it didn’t appal me to discover a close friend had received online abuse, purely by dint of being my mate. After discussing the lengths the troll must have gone to to track her down, she asked me, ‘Do you ever worry someone might do something awful to you?’ Er, not until now, no.
Of course it’s upsetting, even for a cynical old-timer like me. Worse still are people who actually know me casting aspersions on my profession on social media. Often these are the same charlatans who would think nothing of sidling up to me for the latest gossip on the Royal family, while publicly pretending that reading any such coverage is completely beneath them.
Most pernicious of all though – not least after Piers Morgan’s departure from Good Morning Britain following a complaint to ITV and Ofcom from the Duchess – is the corrosive effect this whole hullabaloo is having on freedom of speech. When you’ve got a former actor effectively editing a British breakfast show from an £11 million Montecito mansion, what next?
I cannot help but think we are in danger of setting race relations back 30 years if people are seriously suggesting that any criticism of Meghan is racially motivated. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. When Priti Patel was accused of bullying, the very same people who willingly hung the Home Secretary out to dry are now the ones defending Meghan against such claims, saying they have been levelled at her simply because she is ‘a strong woman of colour’.
Of course journalists should take responsibility for everything they report and be held to account for it – but Harry and Meghan do not have a monopoly on the truth simply because the close friend and neighbour who interviewed them in return for £7 million from CBS took what they said as gospel.
If she isn’t willing to probe the disparity between Meghan saying someone questioned the colour of Archie’s skin when she was pregnant, and Harry suggesting it happened before they were even married, then someone must. There’s a name for such scrutiny. It’s called journalism.

The public reserves the right to make up its own mind – with the help of the watchful eye of a free and fair press. But that press can never be free or fair if journalists do not feel they can report without fear or favour. I’m lucky that a lot of the criticism I face is more than balanced out by hugely supportive members of the public and online community who either agree – or respect the right to disagree. Along with the hate mail, I have had many thoughtful and eloquent missives, including those that good naturedly challenge what I have written in the paper or said on TV, which have genuinely given me pause for thought.
I am more than happy to enter into constructive discourse with these correspondents, who are frankly sometimes the only people who keep me on Twitter. I mean, let’s face it, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the bloody thing if this wasn’t my day job.
With the National Union of Journalists this month declaring that harassment and abuse had ‘become normalised’ within the industry, never have members of Britain’s press needed more courage. As Winston Churchill famously said, ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’
Who would have thought that the preservation of the fundamental freedoms that we hold so dear should partially rest on the shoulders of those who follow around a 94-year-old woman and her family for a living?
If I’d known then what I know now, would I still have written the bridesmaid’s dress story?
Yes – doubtlessly reflecting sisterly sobs all round. But after two decades in this business, I am clear-eyed enough to know this for certain: whatever I had written, it would still have ended in tears.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 73
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bower

>Thomas Bauer (as he then was)[2] was born in London in 1946. His parents were Jewish refugees who fled Prague after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and arrived in London later that same year.[3]

A Jewish man, whose parents escaped their own murder, being described as an "angry white guy". Disgraceful.
I bet his parents could tell Me-again a thing or two about having to leave a country because of racism.

 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Sad
Reactions: 73

Oohthedrama

Iconic Member
Moderator
Really interesting piece about prince Philip, slightly off topic here but it’s a long way from Markles Hollywood childhood!!!

which member of the Royal family fits the following description? He reads poetry, and is especially fond of T.S. Eliot.
He is interested in spiritual matters, religion and the environment. He can design jewellery.

He has suffered racial abuse and been criticised for Left-wing views. He ran into fierce opposition for trying to shake up the Palace ‘old guard’. He suffered a lonely, difficult childhood, and is spoken of as ‘kind’ and ‘sensitive’.
In case you need a clue, the nation breathed a great sigh of relief earlier this week when he was released from hospital.
Can this really be bluff, outspoken, short-tempered Prince Philip? Yet this is the picture that emerges from this book by a former member of the Royal press corps who was once ordered to ‘get off the f ***** g grass’ by Philip in Windsor Great Park.
The Duke gave a speech to journalists in 1973 — when he and the Press were still on speaking terms — in which he considered his public image. ‘The trouble with reputations is that they cling much more tenaciously than the truth,’ he said. ‘If anyone can offer me any advice about how I can improve this reputation, or even offer any reason why I have it, I shall be more than grateful.’
Even then he realised that his reputation for rudeness and saying the wrong thing would overshadow everything he has ever done. He once told a friend, rather poignantly: ‘I don’t seem able to say nice things to people, though I’d like to. Why is that?’
What a good question. Other members of his family are occasionally a bit tetchy, but Philip is a repeat offender. This very readable book — set out in 100 chapters to mark the Duke’s 100th birthday in June — contains a list of 100 so-called gaffes, and 12 times that he has sworn at people.
THE famous remark about ‘slitty eyes’ and China is there — of course it is — and one of his remarks was apparently so jaw-droppingly awful that nobody has felt able to reproduce it in print. Yet, as the author Ian Lloyd notes: ‘The majority are actually very funny, said with a twinkle in the royal eye and, more importantly, well received by those he’s talking to.’
The book doesn’t gloss over any criticism of its subject, but reminds us that Philip has lived an extraordinary life that, in many ways, has been far from easy.
He was born into the Greek royal family in Corfu in 1921, on a dining room table. His family — who were Danish and German — were driven into exile after the Greco-Turkish war and went to live in Paris.
At the age of nine, Philip was sent on a picnic to get him out of the way while his mother Princess Alice — who suffered from religious mania and schizophrenia — was removed from the house by men in white coats and taken to a Swiss sanatorium. There she was visited by Sigmund Freud, who recommended that her ovaries be X-rayed to cure an excessive libido. He would, wouldn’t he.
Philip’s father reacted to these events by leaving almost immediately for the south of France with his mistress. From that moment on, Philip was pretty much homeless until his marriage.
When he wasn’t at school or, later, in the Navy, he lived with a series of aristocratic relatives, one of whom remarked: ‘He gave the impression of a huge, hungry dog — perhaps a friendly collie who had never had a basket of his own and responded to every overture with eager tail-wagging.’
The Queen had her eye on Philip from an early age, but they began to take more interest in one another when, in 1943, he was invited to Windsor to see Princess Elizabeth play the principal boy in a production of Aladdin. Four years later, they were engaged.
Even then, the Palace didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet. He was referred to by friends of the King as ‘Charlie Kraut’ and the Queen Mother called him ‘The Hun’. Tommy Lascelles, the King’s private secretary and star turn of The Crown, said Philip was ‘rough, ill-tempered, uneducated and would probably not be faithful’.
Despite all that, the King took to Philip. He taught his future son-in-law how to shoot, and — noticing that his clothes were rather worn — arranged a visit to the Royal tailor.
Philip was no stranger to grand houses, but this was definitely a step up. When he stayed at Windsor, he would get up in the night and wander down the corridors with a torch, gazing at the Gainsboroughs and Van Dycks of the Royal art collection.
HE IS occasionally accused of being a distant father, yet he made sure to read bedtime stories to his children.
And as the new Prince Consort, he tried to modernise life at the Palace. He introduced a training programme for footmen, abolished their powdered wigs, started a review of working practices and even introduced automatic dishwashers. He was the first member of the Royal family to give a television interview. Oh, and he preferred Double Diamond brown ale to wine. ‘The old boys here hadn’t had anything quite like it before,’ he once noted.
They’d certainly seen nothing like the incident at Broadlands when the Duke chased the Queen up the stairs, pinching her bottom as she shouted ‘Stop it, Philip! Stop it!’ He has a romantic streak where the Queen is concerned, and once wore a tie covered in love hearts to mark a reunion after a long foreign trip. Who’d have thought the Iron Duke would be such an old softie?
Does he also have a wandering eye? It’s occasionally suggested that Philip has enjoyed affairs during his long marriage. The book names 11 likely candidates, but concludes that there is no substance to the rumours.
Other members of his family haven’t been so steadfast.
As a child, Philip spent time living with his aunt, Princess George of Greece, who was such an enthusiastic collector of sexual partners that, in 1918, she wrote an unpublished memoir called The Men I Have Loved.
Perhaps it was Philip’s unusual family background that has made him so — how can we put this politely? — robust. He was sailing off the Isle of Wight one year during Cowes Week when the skipper of another boat hailed him as ‘Stavros’ and asked him to move out of the way.
‘It’s not Stavros,’ retorted Philip, ‘and it’s my wife’s f ***** g water, so I’ll do what I f ***** g well please.’ Sometimes it’s very handy to be married to the Queen
 
  • Heart
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: 73

JAR21

VIP Member
As a Jewish woman I am sick to death of the blatant anti semitism coming mainly from those on the left , if Omid Scumbie had done a quick Google he would see that Tom Bower is Jewish!! So calling him a angry old white man is incorrect...... I’m sure your employers H and M would hate you spreading that misinformation right Omid? Or doesn’t it matter if someone still “looks white”
 
  • Like
  • Heart
  • Haha
Reactions: 67

pellegrino

Chatty Member
Minge will definitely want to go one further than Zara so I'm predicting a birth in the nearest stable. There'll be a bright star hovering nearby, Welby will be hiding in the bushes and will leap out to baptise the miracle that is the second child. Because it will be a fucking miracle if she's actually pregnant.
 
  • Haha
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 66

Chilli pepper 19

VIP Member
Glad to see Thomas Markle isn't letting this lie. I think for whatever reason (personally I believe there wasn't 5 people but just MM) she didn't want the 5 names to be released. Hopefully this will reveal yet another lie.


Also has anyone noticed a sudden change in tone from the royal reporters about the Sussex Squad. They're suddenly talking about the death threats and hate they're getting despite having it for years and I've noticed a few papers start to refer to it being Harry and Meghan's twitter base. It's probably wishful thinking but I hope they're going to uncover just how coordinated this all is.

Finally really liked Piers article. It was balanced and factual. But was anyone surprised that Beresford person was the only guy from GMB who hadn't seemed to text him after he left? I think someone thinks they're now a Billy bigballs big player at ITV.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 66

Lollydyerx

Well-known member
As a Jewish woman I am sick to death of the blatant anti semitism coming mainly from those on the left , if Omid Scumbie had done a quick Google he would see that Tom Bower is Jewish!! So calling him a angry old white man is incorrect...... I’m sure your employers H and M would hate you spreading that misinformation right Omid? Or doesn’t it matter if someone still “looks white”
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 66

Chita

VIP Member
I wish I hadnt wasted those hours watching the wedding which I will never get back. For someone who didnt want to have a wedding like that, she certainly seemed to be enjoying all the attention. The sooner she gets her comeuppance the better as I am sick of seeing her face on the screen when ITV keep advertising their interview on ITV Hub.
I enjoyed the Wedding. I thought the Windsor setting was beautiful.

I got a lump in my throat when I saw Diana's two boys striding along in their uniforms on their way to the ceremony.

I also got a lump in my throat when I saw Meghan on the steps standing alone, independant and proud and then being welcomed by Charles for the walk down the aisle.

Now, I feel cheated. It was all fake.
And it stinks.
 
  • Like
  • Heart
Reactions: 65