Duchess Of Cornwall

Yesterday’s Royal announcement that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant had Fleet Street’s finest scrambling for an angle. On the face of it you might have thought it was hard to do much with “Kate Pregnant”. It’s Kate. She’s pregnant. What more is there to say?

Day One of the yarn is a bit early yet for “Kate’s baby scare”, even for the British newspapers, and there’s nothing to suggest the Duke of Cambridge isn’t responsible for her condition, so no dice there either.

So congratulations to the London Daily Telegraph for being the first to grasp the implications of her hospitalisation with morning sickness, asking “Could it be twins for the Duchess?”

Continue reading "We’re facing a long gestation for this future monarch" »

Prime Ministers are Tweeting, the Queen is delighted, the whole magazine industry is embracing temporary salvation and a young woman is in hospital feeling like death warmed up and no doubt desperately hoping everything is going to be ok.

Talk about a lot of pressure on one lone uterus.

The announcement that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant is indeed joyous news, and when you’re carrying the future third-in-line to the British throne, it’s not news you get to celebrate in private. But while I’m not usually one to advocate public institutions outright lying - continuing the cat-and-mouse speculation game for a few more weeks might have been the kindest thing to do for Kate and William.

Continue reading "They should have said Kate copped a dodgy prawn" »

Prince Charles has been ridiculed or reviled for so long that it has been widely assumed that when his Mum shuffles into the sunset the republican debate will renew itself amid alarm at the prospect of his ascension to the throne.

Charles cops it from all directions. Lefties don’t like him simply because he is a Royal, and represents the undemocratic traditions of his unelected, filthy-rich family, the same family which absurdly enough provides Australia with its Head of State.

Right-wingers don’t like him because he is a bleeding heart, with his ruminations about the beauty of the Islamic faith, his strong views on architecture and heritage, his passionate environmentalism and his advocacy of renewable energy.

Continue reading "My kind of oddball: Arise, King Charles of Australia" »

At about the same time last week that news broke a French magazine was about to publish some topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge an American actress of the rising-star variety “accidentally” Tweeted a naked picture of herself.

It probably says a lot about how big a gulf the Atlantic Ocean really is. While the immediate and unanimous reaction to the Kate pictures has been condemnation and disgust that a private holiday with her husband was infiltrated and exploited in such a manner, across the ditch Alison Pill and her boyfriend both laughed off her self-inflicted breach of privacy.

The biggest difference between the two cases, of course, is that the Duchess quite reasonably thought she was alone with her husband, unaware that more than a kilometre away a grub with a giant telephoto lens was crashing their private party.

Continue reading "Is privacy dead? For Kate the answer is sadly yes" »