The royals - Kitty Kelley [304]
* During a 1980 trip to New York, Raine corrected an American journalist who described her as the Countess of Spencer. Raine explained that she reflected her husband’s title and he was the Earl Spencer, not the Earl of Spencer. She said that earls whose names are part of their title count for more socially than earls named for a place.
* In March 1980 Private Eye published an item about Andrew Parker Bowles on duty without his wife, who elected to stay in England: “Andrew, 39, is married to a former (?) Prince Charles fancy, Camilla Shand, and if I should find the royal Aston Martin Volante outside the Parker Bowles mansion while the gallant Colonel is on duty overseas, my duty will be clear.” The next month the Daily Mail reported that Prince Charles was to preside over the Zimbabwe independence celebrations. His official escort was “old flame, Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles.” Noting that Andrew Parker Bowles would be in England, the report said: “Buckingham Palace officials have always been happy to see Charles in the company of happily married women because such sightings cannot give rise to rumour.”
* The nude photos of Diana were offered for sale in 1993 by a German magazine but were withdrawn and given to her. “They have no journalistic relevance for us,” said the editor, “and could only be used to satisfy voyeurism.”
* No other Prince of Wales since Charles II, three hundred years earlier, took so long to make up his mind about getting married. Only two others—James Stuart and Henry V from even earlier times—were still unmarried at the age of thirty.
* By 1996 only Prince Rainier of Monaco and King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand had reigned longer than Queen Elizabeth II.
* Writing in the Daily Telegraph in 1993, Alastair Forbes challenged the royal denial and said the authenticity of the taped conversations had been “proved to me beyond doubt, despite the Palace’s glib denial.”
* Years later, after his retirement, the former Archbishop confided to his biographer that the Prince of Wales was severely depressed before his marriage because he was in love with another woman. He also described Diana as a “schemer.”
* The bride was allowed to invite one hundred people and her parents fifty. The bridegroom was allotted three hundred invitations, which he distributed to his beloved nanny, Mabel Anderson; former girlfriends like Sabrina Guinness and Susan George; and, of course, his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, and her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles.
* “John Bowes-Lyon had to apologize to Diana when it appeared in print that she was frothing at the mouth for a few seconds,” said columnist Taki Theodoracopulos in 1993. “She has a slight disease that resembles epilepsy, which John Bowes-Lyon knew from the Queen Mother. He told me about it and I, of course, told Nigel [Dempster], who, like the dumb shit he is, used it in his book [ Behind Palace Doors, written in 1993 with Peter Evans]. When the book came out, John had to write a note to Diana, saying, ‘I apologize and I had nothing to do with that.’ ”
* Months later the Princess was pregnant and announced her news to the royal family at Balmoral. The Queen ordered Champagne to celebrate. Within a week Diana had miscarried. She became pregnant a third time in 1983 and gave birth to Prince Harry on September 15, 1984.
* When the author called the actor in 1996 to confirm the 1985 incident, Eastwood’s agent said to delete the “made-my-day” quote: “We don’t use that line anymore.”
* This image of Prince Andrew, as a highly eligible bachelor, appeared in The Appallingly Disrespectful Spitting Image Book. Entitled “Hot Dog,” its caption read: “Andy is by far the dishiest royal, not having inherited many of the genetic disorders which mar the royal bloodline. Not for him the hump of Richard III,