The royals - Kitty Kelley [189]
In anticipation of the royal visit, Chinatown merchants had put up a banner: “WELCOME FERGIE AND WHAT’S-HIS-NAME.” Andrew grinned at it good-naturedly. Stuffed into his pin-striped suit, he looked as if he had just won the all-you-can-eat contest. On his previous visit to Los Angeles, he had been called a royal brat after turning a spray-paint hose on the press. The British Consulate had had to pay one American photographer $1,200 in damages and issue an apology.
“I was given the check to repair my cameras,” recalled photographer Chris Gulken. “I was told: ‘Her Majesty wishes you to know that this money comes from Andrew’s personal funds and not from the public funds of the British people.’ ”
A Los Angeles television commentator reported Andrew’s 1984 trip to California as “the most unpleasant British visit since they burned the White House in the War of 1812.”
The Prime Minister was so distressed by Andrew’s press coverage that she commissioned a confidential study from public relations specialists in the London office of Saatchi & Saatchi to try to tone down Andrew’s image. Mrs. Thatcher’s report was sent to the Queen, who refused to read it. She said, “I hardly think I need advice on family matters from that frightful little woman.”
On this trip Andrew was better behaved. Arriving in Long Beach on the royal yacht, Britannia, he and Sarah spent ten days touring Southern California. They visited schools and supermarkets, where she blew kisses and he signed autographs. She appeared with tiny American and British flags in her hair and told photographers, “Check out the hair, boys.” During their tour of Bullocks Wilshire, the Los Angeles department store, the couple visited the boutiques of several British designers. Andrew spotted a black suede jacket that he admired, so the president of the store had the jacket gift-wrapped for him. Andrew accepted the present and then decided he would prefer something more contemporary, like a navy blue suede bomber jacket. The store made the switch.
Schoolchildren, who had never met a duchess before, crowded around Fergie and peppered her with questions about living in a castle. She said the hardest part was going to the bathroom. The youngsters grew wide-eyed as she told them about the Queen’s old-fashioned toilets. “You’ve got to pull up on the loo, not push down,” she explained. “I always bungle it.”
The British press branded her as coarse as a braying donkey. Once described as a breath of fresh air, she became a skunk at the garden party. “She’s an international embarrassment,” complained London’s Sunday Times. “Americans will likely retreat to their more refined dinner parties, there to cap each other with anecdotes about the awful vulgarities of the British.”
That evening the Duchess swept into a party decked out in the diamonds she had received from the Queen. Sparkling in her tiara, necklace, earrings, and bracelet, she quipped to onlookers, “Clock the rocks.” When someone asked her whether she liked Gilbert and Sullivan, she said she preferred Dire Straits. One London journalist cringed. “We wanted a silk purse,” he said, “and we got a sow’s ear.”
But Americans were charmed by the vivacious redhead, especially the movie stars, who lined up in Hollywood to meet her. Morgan Fairchild curtsied breathlessly, and Pierce Brosnan was speechless. “I didn’t know what to say to her,” he admitted with a blush. Jack Nicholson was not so reticent.
“She told me she was disappointed she wasn’t sitting next to me,” he said with a characteristic leer. “I told her that maybe she was lucky she didn’t, because I didn’t know what I might have done to her, if I had.”
Fergie hurried up to John Travolta to tell him the Princess of Wales was still bragging about their dance at the White House. “She told me that Diana never stops talking about it,” said Travolta, beaming.
At one gala dinner the Duchess appeared in a gown that looked like a playing field of pink tulle waffles topped with pink satin roses. London’s Sunday Times commented disdainfully, “She looked like