The royals - Kitty Kelley [306]
* John Bryan also negotiated for Sarah’s sister, Jane Ferguson Luedecke. He sold exclusive coverage of her second wedding to Hello! magazine for $300,000, but Jane and her husband received only $217,000. They sued Bryan for the rest—$83,000. Sarah was outraged by the lawsuit. Siding with Bryan, she stopped speaking to her sister. A London judge ordered Bryan to repay the money, plus interest, and all court costs. But as of July 1996 Bryan had not paid. The next month he was declared bankrupt.
* After Caroline was found in a compromising position with a naval officer, she was tried for adultery. “Was the man involved an admiral?” she was asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “He wasn’t wearing his hat.” She was not convicted.
* Sarah wanted a lump-sum payment of $10 million, plus $5,000 a month in child support and her title. She received $750,000 for herself and a $2.1 million trust fund for her children, and she lost her title.
* The late Earl Spencer proved right. After his death his son struggled to operate Althorp, a fifteen-thousand-acre estate valued at $132 million. After four years the new Earl Spencer turned it over to a manager, who rented the property for corporate conferences for $5,262 a day. The young Spencer moved to South Africa with his wife and four children. He later separated from his wife but remained in South Africa. Like his father, he, too, exploited the Spencer name for profit. In 1996 he sold several of the family’s honorary titles at auction to pay for new plumbing.
* The government can restrict journalists because there are no formal guarantees of freedom of speech in Britain. Rather than be restricted by law, British journalists decided to restrict themselves by establishing the Press Complaints Commission in 1991 to monitor their excesses. The commission of seventeen people includes local, regional, and national newspaper editors. It has no enforcement power but is obligated to publish its findings.
* To commemorate her forty years on the throne, the Queen authorized a BBC television documentary, Elizabeth R: A Year in the Life of the Queen. The film focused on her work as head of state and showed little of her family. “The Palace felt it was perhaps necessary to remind people what the Queen did and her enormous devotion to duty,” said producer Edward Mirzoeff. “We deliberately tried not to reveal everything about her life.” The New York Times described the film as “the most boring BBC import ever to make its way to American public television.” The Queen loved it and knighted the producer.
* Six months before the Britannia was to be decommissioned, the Defense Minister announced that a new $100 million ship would be built in time for the Queen’s golden jubilee in 2002. “The Britannia is a symbol of the Crown, the kingdom, and its maritime traditions,” he said, “and should be funded by the nation.”
* In 1997, Britain’s annual survey of the 1,000 wealthiest people listed Diana as 916th with a personal fortune of $98 million.
* Ridiculed in Britain, Fergie came to the U.S., where she was treated like royalty. Her memoir, My Story, became a best-seller, earning her more than $3.7 million. She was paid $1.2 million to appear in a commercial for Ocean Spray Cranapple Juice and another $1 million to represent Weight Watchers International. Weeks after her lucrative American promotions, she amazed the Queen’s bankers by paying off her debts of $6.2 million. “I love Americans,” she said. “They give a girl a break.”
* Born Fayed, the father later added the “al” to his name after he bought Harrods department store in London and the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
* The British press noted that the Queen’s subjects had never seen her cry in public until she bade farewell to Britannia