It’s sort of cute to go back and look at photos of then-Kate Middleton, before she got “duchessed” and before Prince George’s magnificent grumpy-face. Her casual style really was sort of cute – she used to wear lots of jeans (not jeggings) and flats and cute little blazers. She was so apple-cheeked! I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that kind of thing in her duchess-wear. Anyway, I’ve pulled some vintage Kate Middleton photos (circa 2005-07) because that’s the era we’re about to discuss.
Previously, we’ve covered the ongoing hacking trials, where UK editors and assorted shady characters have been charged with criminal acts following the revelations that many members of the public (royalty, celebrities, crime victims) were being hacked on a regular basis. One of the stories we covered was about the testimony of former News of the World editor Clive Goodman, who described hacking into then-Kate Middleton’s voicemail account to listen to messages left for her by Prince William. William used to (and maybe still does) call Kate “Babykins” and “Baby”. Well, Goodman was giving more testimony yesterday, and he said he and his team personally hacked Kate 155 TIMES.
The plot thickens. Kate Middleton’s phone was hacked 155 times, starting on Christmas in 2005, according to testimony from former News of the World royals editor Clive Goodman given today at trial as the hacking case against the now-shuttered News Corp.-owned tabloid continues to unfold. The journalist, who spent time in jail in 2007 for hacking the voicemail accounts of royal aides, told the court that he listened in on the Duchess of Cambridge 155 times, while Prince William’s phone was accessed 35 times and Prince Harry was hacked nine times.
“There has been no intention to deceive you or anybody else about my involvement in hacking,” Goodman said during proceedings at the Old Bailey in London, per the Daily Mail. “If anyone asks me an open question, I will give an open answer.”
He testified that he last hacked Kate’s voicemail on Aug. 7, 2006, the day before he was arrested. He said that William’s then-girlfriend was becoming a figure of “increasing importance around the royal family,” hence the increased effort spent on poking around in her private affairs.
“There were discussions about her and Prince William marrying, moving in, settling down,” Goodman recalled. “She started to receive semi-royal status around the Royal Family.”
Per the Mail, Goodman has admitted during this ongoing trial to hacking the phones of royal aide Mark Dyer; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s son, Tom Parker Bowles. And just today, he testified to hacking Prince Charles aide Michael Fawcett and a PR consultant to the Duchess of York, Kate Waddington. Asked by a lawyer for defendant Andy Coulson, a former NOTW editor, why he never came forward about these particular alleged hacking victims before, Goodman replied that no one had ever asked him until now.
“I’m not on trial for phone hacking, and I completely agree I hacked these people’s phones,” Goodman said. “But they were never put to me individually.”
Coulson, Goodman and fellow defendants Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charles Brooks, Stuart Kuttner, Mark Hanna and Cheryl Carter have all denied being involved in any hacking conspiracy. The trial was suspended back in March after Goodman fell ill and they chose to wait to proceed until he was fit enough to give evidence. Rebekah Brooks has pleaded not guilty to two counts of perverting the course of justice and two counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. Coulson and Goodman have denied two counts of misconduct in a public office. Carter, Hanna and Charles Brooks have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, while Rebekah, Coulson, Edmondson and Kuttner all denied a count of conspiracy to intercept communications as well.
155 TIMES. Good God. And this is just one publication – imagine how many times the editors of The Sun hacked Kate. Imagine how many times The Daily Mail hacked her. And Goodman only stopped in 2006 because he was arrested! I imagine Kate was hacked a lot when she and William broke up in 2007, and probably a lot in the year leading up to their engagement too, when speculation was high and everyone wanted to know what was going on. You know what’s sort of miraculous? That the most the tabloid press ever got on Kate was A) her work-shy ways, B) the Waity thing and C) Dodgy Uncle Gary. Because they were investigating her thoroughly for the better part of seven years pre-engagement and that’s all they got.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Didn’t know the DM is also involved in hacking, that is actually a scary thought.
DM is owned by the same company, yes? If so then of course they are involved. Rupert, Rupert, Rupert.
The Daily Mail is owned by Associated Newspapers, not News International. They’re not part of Rupert’s empire. And there is no evidence that they also hacked people. Doesn’t mean they didn’t and certainly doesn’t mean that they are a respectable enterprise, no matter how hard they’re trying to convince you they are.
The DM isn’t owned by Rupert. It’s owned by a trust owned by the Harmsworth family.
Of course it doesn’t mean Rupert doesn’t have shares in it, but considering how royalist it is, and we know what an anti-monarchist Rupert is, I highly doubt he would own shares and allow it to remain such flag wavingly royalist.
On a different note, all the papers hack. Or use results obtained from hacking. The News of the world is guilty of being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, but they all do it. None are clean.
There really is no privacy anymore. Editors hacked her repeatedly and really it’s not like they were going after state secrets, just royal gossip. It’s pretty appalling.
Vintage girlfriend Kate was really, really pretty with a cute style. I miss apple cheeked Kate!
I was thinking the same thing. Vintage Kate was prettier and looked happier (just my opinion- I admit I had zero attention to her before the marriage & only a touch bit more now).
I think so too, Suze. Her face looks so different with some weight on it.
I wish she would just lay off the make-up, she looks great without so much of it. I like seeing her in something other than jeggings. Who cares if she has a long waist, most of us do not look like models, and we support her not looking like one either. I think that all the model-looking people are in the mag’s, because I do not see any of that type in all the places I’ve been…I think that they’re all on tv.
•wolfpup•
Very true. Even most models have flaws and have learned to embrace them.
I agree with you wolfpup. However, speaking for me, if I were photographed as often as she is I think I’d get hyper sensitive about my looks and how I was photographed. I’m pretty vain as it is, but plaster me on the front page of the newspapers every time I went out and I think I could vie with any supermodel for self centered scrutiny of myself! Every single one of my flaws would be magnified. I think it would be awful. I’d probably end up skinny and overly made up. I hope I wouldn’t, but I bet I would.
@bluhare
I can understand that. However, look at our apple cheeked Kate in the top photo. Her torso doesn’t look overly long in that outfit, nor do her legs look short.
I think the skin tight jeggings with the sky high wedges just accentuate the long torso, not hide it.
I think some of the things she does to hide her “flaws (that aren’t really flaws)” just make them more obvious.
bluhare, I think that you are right concerning human nature, and the struggle for perfection. (I know that’s not exactly what you said – but I’m trying) I think that it is normal for someone to be self-conscious in the position that she has. Perhaps with time she will become more natural, because that is really more becoming. Certainly all the BRF has to relax eventually in the spotlight. Kate is most charming when she is just being herself(?). And yet I still know absolutely nothing about who she is inside. The PR mistakes are so glaring, and I’m just a pleb!
She seemed a lot more confident.
I was thinking that she hasn’t changed all that much at all since then – her style is still very very similar – it’s pretty much an updated, 2014 version of what she was doing back then – with the skinnier jeans, higher heels that are trendy now. She was doing the eyeliner thing back then too, and her hair then was also long and very thick – she just wasn’t yet doing the sausage curls.
She just looks older now, which is obvious that she would. Kind of says to me that she has tried not to let being the “Duchess” change her too much.
They hacked her that many times and that’s all they got? Christ, she’s boring.
Who is Dodgy Uncle Gary.
Gary Goldsmith, her mothers brother. He has been close to Kate her whole life and she and Wills vacationed at his home in Spain a lot. Long story short, he was videotaped doing lines of coke and bragging about Kate. He also spoke about how he could get people ‘underage girls’ (I honestly don’t think he was talking human trafficking, just being gross). He is incredibly rich and its pretty clear that he funds his sisters lifestyle with his drug money.
Rumor also has it ( and I want to express that its just a rumor) that Michael Middleton uses his private plane to help Gary transport drugs in return of him paying for the families lavish lifestyle.
…but if Michael Middleton already has a private plane, why would he need to risk his freedom by transporting drugs? If he’s rich enough to own a plane, it would make sense that he can support his lifestyle.
Gary Goldsmith is pretty vulgar, absolutely, and was caught red-handed taking drugs and talking about underage sex workers (way, way worse than the coke, IMO – a lot of people don’t know what production does to innocent people in the countries growing coca, but any fool knows pretty young girls don’t go into sex work if they have many legit options left to them, and it’s never truly a free decison). But it’s a matter of public record that he started an IT recruitment agency that was sold for hundreds of millions of pounds. His money isn’t dodgy – he is, and you’d struggle to excuse him, but not the cash. He’s one of the richest people in the country through respectable, entreneurial methods.
Given his sister also runs a decent smaller business she started from scratch, you do have to wonder what went wrong with her three kids, none of whom can support themselves. The Goldsmith siblings were supposedly born into their Grandma’s council flat in a rough London suburb and made millions, through their own nerve, work and luck – yet the next generation can’t even hold down a conventional job. Then again, I suppose that makes one of them fairly suited to marrying into our royal family.
I don’t think that makes her necessarily boring. It could be that they kept a folder with all the juicy details waiting for an opportune moment to capitalise on it. If you notice, even the uncle Gary shenanigans were kept at a minimum. Ditto the Middleton finances.
And as she was drawn into the royal fold, that file was simply kept in that drawer and will remain in that drawer until she falls from grace. At that point, the gloves will come off.
This is what happened to Heather Mills McCartney when she divorced Paul McCartney who is considered a national treasure. The minute their relationship moved towards divorce, all Heather’s previous long held ‘secrets’ were splashed across the media.
Piers Morgan details this policy in his book.
The minute anyone becomes famous or is considered a person of interest, the media dig for information and put it in a drawer for future use.
In the case of royals, how much is published depends how much protection the palace provides even when the royal has fallen from grace.
There was that photo of young Diana on a bed with some guy that a newspaper had marked ‘DO NOT PUBLISH’ that came out in recent years. Not really scandalous today, but shows how newspapers worked to protect her image leading up to the wedding.
Thanks, LAK. I was wondering where all the juicy stuff was, too! It makes sense that they hold it back for the right moment. Something to look forward to, LOL.
Oh my. I wonder what (if anything) they’ve got on Kate? If it’s true that she pursued him (literally to the end of the earth!), then wouldn’t it make sense she stay out of trouble?
I think it’s interesting that they were discussing marriage all the way back in 2006. That’s not very Waity.
I don’t know if it was coming from Kate or the press, but there was lots and lots of engagement speculation in 2006/2007, leading up to the breakup. I would wager Kate at least didn’t think it would be another 3/4 years.
But I don’t know how serious any of it was, because she didn’t meet the Queen until Peter and Autumn’s wedding in 2008.
I’m going to go ahead and completely speculate here… I’m guessing that Will knew his life would change completely after getting married. As soon as they were married the interest in them increased immensely, different expectations were on them re: working for the firm, and they were expected to quite quickly have an heir. Despite perhaps knowing they wanted to get married quite awhile ago, they (or perhaps just he) wanted to push it out for awhile to avoid the glare for a little longer. Basically, for them getting married meant having a kid shortly after (or dealing with immense public pressure/speculation about it). Not ready for a kid? Push back the marriage. This was probably difficult on their relationship. My husband and I were together for 10 years before getting married (finishing school, getting jobs, saving money, etc) and there were times that we were very frustrated about not being in a position to move our relationship forward with the obvious next step.
I don’t think she was as waity as she was made out to be.
I agree LNG. I got together with my husband when I was 20 and we didn’t get married til I was 27 (which even seems quite young to me! Not many of my friends were married at that age). It’s took another 5 years to have kids! No one ever called me waity (as far as I’m aware!) I was at university and then travelling, then working on my career … getting married and then having kids was never a priority. I can only imagine the pressure of having all the media watching you, waiting for marriage and babies – the pressure of my mother has been bad enough. I have a bit of a soft spot for these two, because they are at a similar age and stage of life as I am – they definitely seem a bit boring and work shy though, though really no worse than lots of other wealthy SW1-ers I know.
The best member of the middleton extended family.
Certainly the most entertaining!
You know what gets me about this whole thing? That all these famous, rich, STAFFED people were so silly themselves and so badly advised that none of them changed their mobile message pins from the factory setting of 0000. If they’d just done that, none of this would have happened. Not to say they’re to blame or owt but honestly. It beggars belief.
I saw this on the news a day or two ago and even my mouth fell open and caught some flies. 155 times!
That’s how they did their “hacking”? I was wondering how exactly you hack a phone or basically anything, when you’re a journalist, is there a special community college course or something?
Are you serious?? Here I was thinking they were bloody brilliant for decoding PIN’s and all that!
The police assisted so no, the journalists were not brilliant.
Wait a minute. The police assisted in the hacking? Wouldn’t that make them culpable?
Wow, that’s not only despicable but also frightening. 155 times? Holy crap.
Really disgusting. She must feel so violated.
So awful. Nobody, no matter how famous, should suffer such a gross invasion of privacy. I can’t imagine how violated one would feel after something like that. How could you ever leave messages or talk honestly on the phone ever again?
that’s frightening.
on a different note, her face looks really different in those pics. did she lose weight? just got older/matured? she looked so much less… severe then.
New nose? And skinny.
That’s because she lost a ton of weight just before her engagement and does whatever she has to do to keep it off. Must be hard to attend all those royal functions that involve food…
oh, god. and i bet that food kicks ass. i wouldn’t be able to keep away from it. haha
Guests usually comment on whether Kate eats at functions with food, and reports are that she always puts away the whole plate. I can’t imagine having to live with that scrutiny, knowing that every bite will be mentioned in the tabloids. Kate probably works out more so she can eat everything at events, to preempt accusations of anorexia.
I think it’s both. I have a similar face with the apple cheeks and although I haven’t had dramatic weight loss like her my face still is thinner and more angular then it was in college.
You look at those old pics of her and she was still pretty thin so thinking about how thin she must be now to look that much different, wow.
Mel, I was thinking the same thing. Many, many people would covet her earlier figure as she WAS still quite slim before she became so frail and emaciated looking.
It’s funny to read comments that say she looks better with the “extra weight”, “heavier”, etc., because you’d expect to see someone curvy or plump – not slim and athletic as she was before the drastic dieting.
I wish Kate would gain some weight,but Im pretty sure it won’t happen. Maybe go from a size 2-4 to a 6-8-10. I would love for royal women to set a good example for young impressionable women. Kate did have an enviable figure before she married. Athletic, toned, and slim/curvy. Although some women like Kate don’t eat when they’re stressed, so they can’t keep weight on during stressful times. It would be nice for Kate to set a good example for young girls that they can eat reasonably and still snag a royal prince. Maybe Harry will marry a woman who will be able to keep her old figure. As an aside, when women diet excessively, they spend so much time losing weight that they may not have energy and brainpower to devote to charities, their role, career, or maintaining a happy, outgoing personality. Personally, I think a size 12 is still skinny, and appropriate for a royal bride.
Ya I agree – her face has thinned out, which happens to most people as they age from their early/mid 20s to their 30s. I’m the same age as Kate – the same thing has probably happened to me, though obviously it’s hard to notice those things when you see yourself every day in the mirror.
ETA: she also wears a ton more bronzer/fake tan/ blush/contour nowadays, which adds to the gaunt effect.
She looks a lot better with a few more pounds on her. She’s never had any hips, though, that has always made her look skinner.
Anyone who tells you to lose weight when you are a size 12 or less is smoking the crackpipe and needs to be told off.
She was such a cute girl! And she looks like she’s about 10 lbs heavier in these photos. I have to say she looked so much healthier and fresher with a little extra weight. Not that she isn’t lovely now… She is.
so creepy.
You mean publications like The Daily Mail who have openly supporter Nazism and the Black Shirts in the past and now blame everything from Cancer to floods on ‘immigrants/foreigners’ have no journalistic ethics?! Colour me surprised.
i read the transcripts of the trial and goodman also said she changed her pin to access her voicemails numerous times. There were emails about that between reporters, they were read in court some of them said “k changed her pin”.
So my question is how did they get her changed pin every time. Phone company, securtiy people?
Truly dispacable, nobody should have their phones or anything else hacked. period.
And nobody is being punished for this, not goodman, not notw, not phone company.
They probably had a program or some way to easily hack their phones.
Geesh, they show her changing her pin too? Wow. How sad.
This chick has been determined and DISCREET all Caps!! Whooo!
It’s just disgusting. Where have we arrived as a culture and society?
The mind really boggles over this.
He said he’s not on trial for phone hacking…. why the f not? Did he cut a deal?
He has already been jailed for phone hacking. Not sure how long his sentence was or whether it is ongoing.
He is providing evidence that might convict the editors of the papers for which he hacked.
he was jailed only for hacking royal aides not kate , william or harry ……
Considering royal aides are the bedrock of the royals, they would be a better hacking target because they are the ones doing any work.
The royals simply receive instructions and most of that written down.
She’s been hacked 155 times and nothing juicy nor interesting came out? Lol. But seriously, that’s awful and very creepy!
I don’t get it. They have security all over the dang place and there’s not a tech genious that can secure their phones? That seems unlikely. It might not completely solve the problem but it would help; at least the papers would need a better class of crimminal. The girlfriend of a prince would have access to stuff like this. Hell, a buddy of mine can do some pretty dang high tech stuff with his and he’s not formally trained. Why weren’t precautionary measures taken? Did she really not know that was happening?
•InvaderTak•
You’d be surprised about how many ridiculous security breaches the BRF has had.
Just one example, William had a party that an uninvited man just stumbled in off the street with a backpack. Could have wiped out almost all the senior royals with one bomb if that’s what had been in his backpack. Luckily, the guy was just drunk and stupid.
I remember that incident, it was William’s birthday party and if it had been a backpack bomb then Prince Edward would be king right now, because he was touring Canada at the time = the only senior royal not present.
What about when that guy broke into the palace and stumbled into the Queens bedroom, I’m sure she was sitting in bed talking to him until security finally came…
She looked so fresh faced and normal back then. I realize she was younger, but still her face looks so hardened now…is it maybe from anorexia/restricted diet? I absolutely love her in that white and floral spaghetti strapped dress. Guess we will never see her in something like that again. :/