Last updated at 12:20 AM on 23rd January 2011
Please Kate, don't become a Primark Princess
While my father was alive, the Queen Mother used to dine at our house twice a year. When she walked through our front door, her jewels opened magic casements on to fairylands.
Rubies, emeralds, diamonds - the whole contents of King Solomon's mines: wedding presents, she said, from Eastern potentates.
On the sole occasion I sat next to Princess Diana, she told me that the sapphire pendant she wore had been a nuptial gift from a Saudi prince.
The late Australian magnate Kerry Packer, who was on her other side, remarked in awe: 'Jesus Christ, girl! It's bigger than a kangaroo's p****!'
Now Kate and William are apparently saying that instead of wedding presents, they would like donations to charity. Isn't this taking worthiness too far?
After all, we already have the bride arriving at Westminster Abbey in what may be a second-hand Skoda. Is it necessary to then deprive her of the rocks that would come her way from the likes of the Emir of Bahrain?
These potentates surely exist in order to give expensive jewels to the Royal Family. And what is the poor Princess Catherine to wear at galas and state occasions?
No, Kate. Don't shut that magic casement. I know you mean well, but in the difficult years to come we are all going to need an escape to fairylands. Please don't become a Primark Princess.
Anti-Semitism in America
I know a column should try to control itself, but this one would like to boil the Hollywood fraternity in oil.
Certain film folk are trying to destroy the Oscar chances of The King's Speech by claiming, outrageously, that George VI was anti-Semitic because of his thoughts, allegedly expressed in 1939, on restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Let me remind the Academy of Motion Pictures of famous Americans who held deeply questionable views yet were fawned on by Hollywood.
The one-million-strong America First Committee, founded in 1940 after Britain had declared war on Hitler, was dedicated to resisting U.S. entry into the war. Its members included Walt Disney, the openly pro-Nazi national hero Charles Lindbergh and the future President Gerald Ford. The young John F. Kennedy sent a financial contribution, writing: 'What you are doing is vital.'
Disney was a giant of the film industry, Kennedy is idolised by Hollywood because of his later, affected liberalism, while Lindbergh has been the subject of revoltingly sycophantic biopics such as 1957's The Spirit Of St Louis, with James Stewart playing the odious aviator.
It's time someone made a film about anti-Semitism in America. Jews are still not welcome in some posh clubs in Florida and even, until recently, New York. But it's so much easier, isn't it, for the Hollywood bienpensants to besmirch the British instead?
Pity the Romans
According to new claims by scientists this week, global warming caused the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Pity the Romans didn't know that, or they wouldn't have gone to all that trouble inventing central heating.
My dark future
Recently, I went to see a West End play called Ghost Stories. Chatting to other audience members I found half believed in ghosts and a quarter had consulted mediums.
This intrigued me. For some weeks I had been receiving emails from a medium called Tara. She had explained her intrusion into my inbox somewhat startlingly: 'After a spontaneous vision I decided straight away to come to your aid.' I replied to her email and she offered to do a 'complimentary astral reading' of my future.
I was delighted by her discovery that within the next month I would become very rich.
She added, however, that 'for this good fortune to happen' she needed to perform a 'detailed astral ceremony' costing £69.
More from Petronella Wyatt...
Out of curiosity I paid it. But then my future became darker and darker.
Suddenly, Tara felt 'something harmful lurking' close to me.
In February I would suffer 'a reduction in vitality' and 'rheumatism or liver dysfunction'.
In the spring I would succumb to 'nervous fatigue' and in June I would have trouble with my 'sexual and urinary organs which would require surgery'.
I would also get very fat. I could only avoid these disasters if she performed another astral ceremony costing £399.
She is still 'waiting impatiently' for my money and worrying her poor self to shreds on my behalf.
When I looked on the web, I found hundreds of 'mediums' offering similar services, and there must be many vulnerable, bereaved people who would pay their entire savings to these shameless frauds.
Scott and Lumley, the timeless beauties
The engaging Michael Gove, in an attack on ageism in the BBC, says he would rather watch Selina Scott, 59, and Joanna Lumley, 64, than Holly Willoughby, the talking bosom, and Fearne Cotton, both 29. Spot on.
But Ms Scott and Ms Lumley are timeless beauties. What would he say if the choice was between Holly and Fearne or Edwina Currie and Julie Goodyear?
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1349378/Kate-Middleton-Dont-forget-diamonds.html?ITO=1490
celebrity news celebrity gossip entertainment news showbiz news hollywood gossip
No comments:
Post a Comment