Can we please discuss Pippa Middleton and her extraordinary unofficial royal tour of Sydney? For a moment I had stupidly thought the Queen’s sister — sorry, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister — might be interested in keeping a tastefully low profile on honeymoon. But it was no time at all before she broke out the pleated tropical daywear and the lawn-anxiety espadrilles for a shameless international show-boat and full-scale meet-and-greet, complete with fawning natives and a cabin-to-tarmac wardrobe.
Pippa has now been snapped a) in a sub-Mirka Federer drawstring dress after a meal at Sydney harbour, b) in altitude-appropriate athleisurewear ascending Sydney Harbour Bridge and c) in a peach top and Berkshire power bra during a run along the seafront with her preternaturally ancient husband James Matthews.
Depending on your point of view, Pippa is either “out of control” and “drunk on attention” or the only person, save perhaps her sister, who is royalling to perfection.
I don’t care that the Middleton sisters have fake accents, ageing tans and signet rings complete with their plastic crest. At least they are not sinking into a daily mire of depression like the Debbie Downer that is Prince William. Kate could not be more obviously disappointed by the endless It’s a Royal Knockout photoshoots and interviews in which the princes’ grief is dressed up as the more viewer-friendly and self-indulgent “mental illness”.
The Middletons don’t do self-indulgence or misery. In fact, the only “royals” who understand a sense of place and moment and history and duty are the Bucklebury Dementors. Yes, they are better at royalling than the royals.
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Carole Middleton’s vision for the future of the royal image reached its apotheosis not in the royal wedding, a rather dreary “public spaces” event held in vast municipal buildings, but in Pippa’s cosy jealous-making Brexit-tinged hobbity wedding complete with its extraordinary Jackie O dress and statement pages and excitingly vulgar trimmings, including the giant “portapalace” stuffed with Disney foliage and the £6,000 portable lavatories with “aeroplane-style flushes”. It was flash but fabulous.
Carole would never indulge in the parochial behaviour of, say, William, who revealed last week that he, like his father, enjoyed writing to ministers. Not in an interesting way, you understand, but “purely to point them towards people I think they should see”, he said.
I despair that the future of the family lies in a man whose ambitions rise only so high as being a posh sort of traffic warden.
It is easy to sneer at Pippa’s insecure photoshoots or to laugh at the awkwardness of her husband, a stuffed blazer who looks like someone the Princess Royal rejected. But at least Pippa is the one member of the extended royal family who acts like a proper, prissy lady of the manor. I feel it is only moments until she takes to answering the phone “This is royalty speaking”, just as Princess Margaret did; only a matter of time before she turns up on a shoot in a set of the former’s high-heeled wellingtons.
Pippa is our new Princess Margaret and the only person stopping the entire royal muppet show looking at a future without a proper identity or vision.
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Cameron puts his feet in it
Samantha and David Cameron have issued a photo of their feet as part of a tribute to themselves on their 21st wedding anniversary. Staying in a suite at a boutique hotel in Spain complete with a hunting-grade bath and a spotted pistachio chaise longue — because why worry about leaving the Cotswolds when you can bring it with you? — Sam must have taken the best part of five hours curating their trotters for the perfect Instagram message (I assume the orange pedicure belongs to Dave).
And the result? A strangely over-intimate picture that doesn’t say, “Oooh, look at us having fun on our anniversary”, but “Kiss my feet”.
The toes are not sexy, just demanding and imperious. Even beyond the political grave, Dave can be superior, offering up his horny feet while everyone back home scrapes up his silly mess.
A straight-up belfie would have been more honest.
Today’s lesson: double biology
It is never easy being a male teacher, but pity the poor master who had to deal with the sassy babes of Hillview Sixth Form in Kent. When one of the girls was sent home from school for “not wearing a bra” under a see-through top and “distracting male teachers”, a group of girls decided to go “braless” in protest.
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Some got sent home “and they made a couple of the girls cry”, said a fellow student. They’d taken off their bras in order to “make a point about how awful there [sic] actions where [sic] on sending a girl home for not wearing a bra”, she mooed.
I am firmly with the pupil. As a woman I feel it is an affront to our human rights if we aren’t allowed to show our bare boobs at all times, especially at school. When I think of the inequality imposed by pro-bra state oppressors, not allowing nudity when the dress code is “business attire”, I come over quite Jeremy Corbyn. The Jeremy Corbyn of baps.