Public speaking is not Duchess Kate’s strength. Some people are just uncomfortable speaking in front of crowds, or even speaking on-camera, and that’s fine. I feel strongly that if she made public speaking a goal, and really took the time to prepare, she would be fine. But she just doesn’t prepare for the most part. What’s weird is that it feels like Kate has backslid on this – anyone watching the dual interview Kate and William did on the day they announced their engagement (below) would think that Kate would be somewhat good at speaking in public or one-on-one. While she didn’t seem very “natural” in that interview, she was able to speak off-the-cuff and answer any question she was given. Was she prepped? Of course. But how did we go from that to Kate’s stilted, uncomfortable, unable-to-look-up-from-her-notes speech-making these days? I don’t know.
I bring this up because Kate is sitting down for another on-camera interview, again with William. Apparently, the interview has already happened and it will be included as part of a film dedicated to Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday celebrations this year. While Kate has spoken on camera since becoming a duchess, this will be her first-ever sit-down interview as a married lady. Keep in mind that during the past five years, William, Harry and Charles have all given multiple television interviews, but not Kate. Anyway, the film will air sometime in May.
What else is going on the Cambridges? People Magazine had a story about Prince George “quick” adaptation to his nursery school. A royal source told People: “It has been a very happy time for them as a family. Prince George is settling in the nursery school very well. And the family is very grateful for the widespread goodwill they have received from around the world.”
While Kate didn’t have any charitable or patronage events in January, she will be gearing up soon. She has a RAF cadets event on Sunday, and next week she’ll be doing events for Children’s Mental Health Week. There was also this curious little aside in People Magazine’s George story: “George and his parents Prince William and Princess Kate enjoyed their first holiday together as a family with Princess Charlotte.” O RLY? Is that why the Cambridges went dark for most of January? They managed to have a little holiday without anyone knowing? It’s worth noting that Kate’s parents – Carole and Michael – arrived in Mustique for their annual January/February holiday to celebrate Carole’s birthday. Did Will and Kate arrive ahead of the Middletons and they just kept it undercover?
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
I think she’s just doing 30 seconds in a montage “let’s all suck up about Her Maj” interview with the world and his wife, so don’t get too excited, chaps!
Also, in arcane news from Britland, I’m chortling that they gave this to ITV not Auntie Beeb. Chaz STILL hates Nicholas Witchell, right?!
This American understood about 1/3 of your post. lol
Auntie Beeb = BBC?
Chaz = Prince Charles?
Which would make Witchell the head of the BBC?
And he must have produced something Charles didn’t like?
That’s all I got.
Sorry! Um… ok:
1) the “interview” is going to feature dozens of people, so I doubt Kate’s 30 seconds will tax even her.
2) The go-to coverage for establishment shindigs like Her Maj’s birthday is the BBC but this interview will be screened by its competitor ITV.
3) Nicholas Witchell is the BBC’s main royal correspondent. Charles famously once called him “that awful man”.
4) A fond Britisher nickname for the BBC is “Auntie”.
Is that a reasonable translation?!
I am betting her contribution will be minimal. The others are much better on camera and they’ll just use her as teaser filler.
Does Charles have a beef with the BBC? How on earth will he work that out as King? I thought he had to have BBC on speed dial.
Charles doesn’t like Nicholas Witchell (see above) but that’s all I got. On the other hand, that recent suck-up doco with Ant and Dec was also a gift to ITV. So perhaps there is something. But if you want sycophantic, dutiful coverage of royal events, the BBC is certainly the place you’d expect to be.
I’ll die laughing if it turns out to be Normal Bill vs The Press and Dutiful Chaz vs Auntie. If these are the semi-finals, who will make the final?!
I am enjoying the idea that while Charles thrashes out a minor battle with the BBC, Normal Bill takes on the BIG WAR with All Media.
@Sixer
I think we’re all waiting for a Normal Bill v. Dutiful Chazz showdown. Or maybe that’s just me?
Suze – yes! It can be the Fourth Estate Olympics!
Okie – I hear you. But I gotsta admit, warfare between the royals and the media is much more fun for me than whatever inter-family rivalries they’ve got going on. Unless, of course, they all run amok in a vicious rampage that only ends with them all in exile in Timbuktu!
“Unless, of course, they all run amok in a vicious rampage that only ends with them all in exile in Timbuktu!”
The thing I didn’t know I wanted, but now want as much as a Liverpool championship!
Sixer, you really don’t have much respect for the poor people of Timbuktu, do you? They have to live in the middle of a desert and you’d send all those nibnobs over there? Aren’t conditions bad enough?
Bluhare – well, if Richard Branson would just hurry up with his intergalactic plane or whateveritis, I’d be happier to send them into space. Furthest reaches of. Until then, Timbuktu will just have to grin and bear it. Sorry, Timbuktu!
I like the way you think, Sixer. They could rule us from the Royal Lunar Outpost, where they can look down and spit on us every single day. There’s a joke in there about mooning them, but I’m not on my game this morning. 😉
Oh wow. Yes. She could do an interstellar broadcast speech detailing her surprise that she hadn’t found either The Man (on the Moon) or any green cheese (that the Moon is made from). Any failures in delivery could be put down to the intergalactic interwebz connection, right? Win win!
I think she’s passable when talking about something she knows or understand, ie engagement interview.
Her speeches are stitled because 1) she’s the only one talking, 2) her fake accents takes much of her concentration to pull off, 3) I don’t believe she takes the time to practice or even understand what she’s saying.
The engagement interview was taped and edited. She couldn’t think of an answer to the Diana question, they gave her the answer, and she finally did it in the fourth take. I assume her segment of this program will be similar – scripted and edited.
@Nota: I’ve been a CB reader since before the engagement and I’ve never heard that that interview took hours. I’m totally not doubting you! But where is that info from? Were there reports about that at the time? I can’t believe I missed that.
Also: Seeing the engagement interview just highlights how much work Kate had gotten done over the years. And I know she got some work done before the engagement too, but she looks really fantastic there. It’s like night and day now.
CG
Nota is correct. The engagement interview is now notoriously remembered as more scripted with edits and multiple takes than 1 or even 2 continuous shots.
It’s sort of ironic to think. It’s the interview that promoted Kate as the most prepared future royal, but it took many filming takes to make that message believable.
I liked her normal accent in that video of her in the school play and she got the lead role as an acting part she came across clear confident and determine her accent has got ‘posher’
How do you make someone feel uncomfortable with the camera? Undermine and criticize them until they can’t blink. That would explain her behavior changes.
How do you make yourself comfortable in front of the camera?
Put on your big girl pants. Ignore your “haters” on blogs. Focus on those who encourage and root for you – and there are legions of them out there. Learn your subject, and practice, practice, practice.
Use some of the dozen staff you have to practice your speeches 20 times before you give them. Make use of all the taxpayer-funded resources at your fingertips to improve. Learning how to pronounce major terms for your charities (see: palliative) would be a good start.
Wrong way around. Katie Bucket arrived with a tsunami of positive press coverage, mighty establishment support and concomitant levels of public goodwill.
It’s been eroded over time by her own self.
I’d agree that she now has a mountain of public opinion to climb, but she really has nobody to blame but herself. And no amount of #poorjasons can paper over the cracks.
Absolutely!!! She came in with great goodwill. I was rooting for her, as I hoped that she and William would be a happy, productive couple, taking up the mantle of charity that Diana had done. But I’ve never seen anyone public so lazy!!! Her total lack of activities and lack of preparation when she finally does do an event, which shows a lack of interest, has put me off; plus, all the BS they shovel, like her inability to do anything except go to Wimbledon all day because of her maternity, has made me dislike both she and William. Plus, banana curls and absurd giggling at days of remembrance. She really is a stunted and vapid woman. It’s amazing that she is in this day and age, but who else could be unemployed and sit around for her 20s and wait for the phone to ring? Only someone very vacuous. She was a big mistake for the BRF, and this will come back to haunt them.
And I KNEW they were away on vacation!!! So much for Normal Bill getting back to work as a pilot. Ha!!!
If she can take a week to get a scuba-diving certificate, spend summer afternoons drawing pictures of her children, go on frequent shopping and hair-styling trips to London, go watch sporting events, etc., then she can take some time to be taught by a speech teacher and make her office staff an involuntary captive audience while she repeatedly practices her speeches in front of them.
It’s not like she has no options on how to become a better public speaker whether in front of a crowd or a camera. They’re millionaires who can hire nearly anybody to come over to one of the estates and be taught and practice in private.
if the world contained an anne_000 t-shirt, I would be wearing it as I sipped hot cocoa from my anne_000 mug while watching the anne_000 Royal Watch show costarring Sixer and LAK and bluhare etc!
And we’d all be saying “give us Liberty or give us . . . . . . . . . that really hot guy over there!” 😀
@ Liberty
😀
Isn’t it odd that she hasn’t done any other interviews since the engagement interview? How many years has it been? Married in 2011. So, one interview every five years?
I’m not the expert on this but I think senior Royals rarely do interviews at all, but that may be changing since Charles seems to be more accessible to the press and is still reaching out to younger generations long after the launch of the Prince’s Trust.
One of the statements from Diana during the Panorama interview was she believed the British Monarchy needed more contact with the general public (not by “riding bicycles”), the Royals, as much as they may have viewed Diana as a curse, learned from her.
And many at the time of the year 1995 Panorama interview felt it was the biggest mistake from Diana, however considering what happened to her, that interview is a key component of her legacy.
William has done quite a few interviews in the past few years, by himself and with Harry.
The Panorama interview was a blessing and curse to Diana. She herself was said to have regretted it, but who knows really?
Diana must be credited with pushing the royal family into the 20th and now 21st century. Be visible, be empathetic, be human. She pushed those things.
However, on a personal level, that interview was not good for her. She lost much because of it.
I said a long time ago that when HM was annoyed with their behavior it would change. Now there is an interview
Do you think this is due to her maj or is it #poorJason/Billy placing fleas in ears?
I can only imagine how many takes it took to get anything useable–it took hours to get that engagement interview in the can.
I cannot wait to see this! So many questions; will Kate’s accent sound like an aristo imitating a pleb imitating an aristo? Will she fondle and caress her hair like a Bond villain would his cat? Will we catch a glimpse of #PoorJason feeding Kate her lines?
Kaiser, you are being very generous about that engagement interview. She is very nervous and is staring at William most of the time, taking every cue from him. Plus, she is talking about events from her own life, so she darn well should be able to answer them naturally. If she couldn’t do that, she would be an imbecile, and even though I think she might be disengaged from her princess duties, I think she is far, far from stupid.
I think her public speaking engagements make her nervous because she truly has *no idea whatsoever* what she is talking about. If she were interested in her patronages and learned something about them, it would all come a bit easier to her.
That said, she should be able to spit out something complimentary about the Queen, and she again will have Wills to lean on. So it should be ok.
I agree that she has no interest in what she is saying and for whom she’s speaking in favor of.
Also, she’s too preoccupied with the sound of her voice, her accent, and how she looks as she speaks. For her, it seems as if public speaking is all about her image rather than the importance of the context of her speeches.
ITA that she is too preoccupied with her looks and fake accent when giving speeches that she doesn’t pay attention to her cue cards. That last one was painful to watch, if she hadn’t spent most of the time shaking her hair out of her eyes she might have been able to talk without continually looking at her cards.
I get that public speaking is scary – thats a demon i have faced but she knew what came with marrying him and should have spent her GF years preparing, instead of waiting by the phone.
Agreed, Betti. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Her only will is Billy Boy.
Sometimes being uncomfortable in public speaking is a symptom of a more substantial distress, In this case practice or preparing yourself is not enough, You need to analyse the causes and It may take years to recover. If you are in the spotlight you feel such a pressure that you cannot even try to speak.
I experienced myself such a difficult situation. I had been good in public speaking for years, and suddenly, after I moved to a different company and role, I started to feel insecure and anxious when talking to a crowd. It went worse and worse, I even had a couple of panic attacks, I had to go through years of painful analysis sessions before appreciating some results. Because I was trained and experienced but my subconscious was boycotting my career.
I am good at my job and you can imagine the embarrassment I experienced when I had to stop talking in front of a crowd of customers and colleagues because I was completely unable to organize my thoughts and recover my speech.
If she feels only a fraction of what I went through, I really feel sorry for her.
Do you have plenty of time on your hands, have two dozen office staff and unlimited resources to help you improve in your career? Because she does and she continues not to improve.
Her staff can write her speeches and help her reharse. But they cannot speak on her behalf if she feels uncomfortable. And this has nothing to do with her being good or prepared (or not).
Probably LOT has her own staff as well, but her issue was something different from being lazy.
Lot expressed sympathy for KM if she was experiencing something similar to what she did. That is the point I’m addressing. Even if KM has severe public speaking fears or other issues preventing her from doing a better job, she has unlimited resources to address those concerns.
The fact that she is getting worse rather than better points to her laziness. She is on year 15 of being in the public eye, year 5 of being a never-hard-working royal.
At what point is this 34-year-old going to be expected to do her job and do it well, or are the excuses going to continue until she is 90?
I think the difference is that LOT still has to work and thus keeps trying, because she has to earn her income, whereas, Kate still keeps getting an income even though she chooses not to work.
So LOT keeps working on her speaking skills as it’s a necessary part of her being able to make money for food, rent/mortgage, various insurances, clothing, kids’ expenses, retirement savings, etc. But Kate doesn’t seem to want to do it in any way for any reason. Why? Because she knows she can get away with not doing it and still have all her expenses and luxuries paid?
If she had any intention of being an actual public servant but was handicapped by a genuine and intractable problem with public speaking, then she would make sure to work doubly hard at every other aspect of a royal role to make up for it.
Since she does not do that, and in fact does the opposite of that, I’m not inclined to credit that any such intractable public speaking problem exists.
^ ITA with Sixer’s comment re: disability – if George VI can do it with a severe stutter then there is no excuse for her given that she clearly makes no effort to improve herself.
Sixer, I love that explanation. I was actually nodding as I read it! And not nodding off either,
The Duchess of Faff is keen to hit the ground running and contribute to HRH interview.
😀
She was so ‘energized’ to do such an ‘amazing’ interview and wanted to ‘keep up the good job’ she’s always done.
I’m sure she’ll contribute a few highly vapid sound bites, that’s all. She’s so keen to learn so enormously much from Her Madge, she’s just hugely grateful to have the opportunity!
It’ll be a hectic whirl of engagements.
Oooooo. Good memory!
Yes and we’ll be dazzled with her sharp as a tack wit and intellect.
I read “holiday” in the American way, as in, they spent Christmas together. Not a vacation.
Ditto. If they meant an actual trip I think People would have elaborated on that
It would be nice and certainly endearing to all Monarchists if the interview took place on a nice comfy couch and Kate held baby Charlotte on her lap while George sat beside them but I seriously doubt that was the interview scenario at all.
As far as sneaking away to Mustique, let’s try to spot if Kate is sporting a glow about her (not pregnancy, but who knows?) in about five days from now- I’ll have to check the exact date of her next engagement but I think it’s the 7th FEB.
Interesting that they feel the need to ‘sneak’ off for a holiday. But then Bill has always been sneaky so it fits. On the other hand, didn’t he just have 3 weeks off???
He did. He got three weeks off for Christmas.
If the Queen and Charles want George and Charlotte involved, then they’re probably going to have to bribe W&K with promises of a larger clothing fund and maybe even a large private jet with a 24/7 pilot.
I think that one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, we will find out that they also had another holiday somewhere else. Maybe Mustique or some other beach destination. Maybe they negotiated with and/or duped the press. Now that they are back it will be okay to write about it.
I am not getting my hopes up about the interview. It will probably be a few trite sentences strung together on how the Queen inspired her. All delivered with many head shakes and hair touching.
Oh, you forgot the manic smiling.
Will looks charming, funny and à l’aise during the interview. I wonder what had happened to him ?!
The Duchess of Faff.
maybe somebody could explain all that Mystique disdain to me . They go there pretty much every year , what’s your problem with that ?
They sneak off to holiday in a 5* resort every year, justifying it as a ‘well-earned break’, despite the fact that their engagement counters are horrendously inflated with puff-pieces, e.g. watching a tennis match, giving birth, walking through an airport.
If they actually worked during the year, no one would begrudge them a break; the Queen doesn’t work from late December until the early Spring, but no one minds because she works so hard the rest of the year. William and Kate do not. They take tax-payer money they haven’t earned and use it to fund a lavish holiday.
Meanwhile, the country they represent has a record number of people forced to use to food banks to ensure their families do not starve. That’s not to say that William and Kate shouldn’t go on holiday, but that the lavishness of their destination and the utter lack of any work to earn it is downright hypocritical considering their image of normalcy. That’s what offends me, as a British person, at least.
The general theme is “Taking a holiday from what”? They do so little work that their daily lives are seen as a holiday. Last year they spent two weeks in Mustique, but all of her work hours added up were less than three weeks worth of work in the entire year.
Because they’re paid by taxpayers, it’s like they’re government employees, but ones with the highest salary level including security expenses.
Contrary to what W&K think, they’re not paid just to exist, but to work on behalf of the good of the public, as the reason why the BRF still exists is based on the goodwill of the public. So they must show value for the money they receive.
If a government employee works maybe 3 weeks out of the year based on total hours worked, then it looks bad when they go on vacations with their PR saying that they’re well-deserved breaks from working so hard.
Now, if W&K lived on his personal wealth, which is about $17 million, and aren’t taking taxpayers’ money and aren’t getting benefits from being an heir to the BRF, then there won’t be as much criticism as to how they’re living their life in such a self-indulgent manner.
From all reports is cheap with his money. He feels entitled to freebies that celebrate his glory. If he is cheap with money then I hate to think how cheap he is with human relations.
@ hmmm
‘If he is cheap with money then I hate to think how cheap he is with human relations.’
I think you’re right about that. I think that’s one reason why he couldn’t care less about using his position and influence to help others. I think that copter job was something he thought he could have fun at and be praised for rather than any real concern about the patients. I know this might be a cruel assessment, but I don’t see anything in him that isn’t first and foremost about himself and his enjoyment.
I agree, Hannah. A couple of tropical vacations a year doesn’t bother me at all. It’s what happens (or doesn’t happen) the rest of the time.
You know it absolutely baffles me how she “got the job”. In a regular world, if she interviewed and applied for said job she’d be laughed out of the running. She is utterly incapable of engaging her brain and/or developing the skills necessary to bring meaning to her role. She just doesn’t get it and apparently is happy letting Prince Grumpypants lead the war against taking their roles seriously and doing an honest day’s work.
She got the ‘job’ as it became very obvious that she was the only girlfriend left standing that was prepared to marry him – no one else wanted him. He’s a well known cheater and douche.
I agree.
She and her family probably convinced William that they’re going to accept anything he does to Kate, the marriage, and the parenting of the kids, so long as they, er she gets the ring. I think he’s given extraordinary freedoms in that marriage, so long as he doesn’t dump them, er her.
And the other women and their families in William’s life probably never would have tolerated this, so he went with the one that would.
Because I doubt it’s mostly about Carole’s cheese toast and the chance to spend loads of time with the Mid offspring. I don’t think he spends much time with Carole, Pippa, James, and Kate together or individually. I don’t think it’s what the PR keeps stating, that it’s about being part of a close-knit middle-class values family. I think it’s about an arrangement that gives him as much power and freedom as he wants.
Agree, William is douchey, and he wasn’t going to marry someone who was enthused about the role because he sure isn’t. I think she is less petulant than him but has been influenced by his negativity about “royal work” (“whatever THAT means”) over the years.
Watching that engagement interview is telling. William takes over most of the questions. It doesn’t just appear that way; I looked at the transcript available online through ABC News. Even if you account for jitters and a need for decorum, nothing about these two suggests a couple in love. They don’t seem to have a cute story about their engagement (which was exactly like Will’s friend’s engagement in Africa, supposedly) yet Kate refers to coming back from Scotland and having an awkward conversation with her mother in which both “knew” but didn’t know if the other “knew” about the engagement yet. It’s all quite awkward. When Kate gets asked about work, she makes the most convoluted word salad imaginable. The only true affection I saw in the video was when Kate was gazing down at her new ring.
^ The whole story around their engagement was very odd and that, if memory serves me correctly (and i can’t bear to watch that interview), they waited 3 months before telling anyone about it. Everything about it was rushed and last min and we know the BRF wasn’t told until the morning of the announcement. I wouldn’t be surprised if he proposed the day before, hence the awkwardness about how it all happened.
Who knows what will happen in the future but I have never got vibes that either is really happy – very sad.
@anne_000
Ironic, really, given how much his mother suffered with a cheater and his ‘freedom’. I wonder what she would think of that.
@ hmmm
Very true.
Does he have no ability to have any depth of thought? He keeps invoking his mother’s memory yet he’s the kind of guy who his mother couldn’t stand to be with. Go figure.
It also seems that the royal family, Bill boy, and #poorjason are trying to save face. All. the. time. Heaven forbid that they were saddled with a dud.
Guess TQ is fed up with their laziness as the rest of us but I’m willing to bet this is coming from Philip if at all true. He’s the one that really rules the firm.
I was browsing through a semi-recent issue of Hello (I know, I know) recently. It had coverage of Kate’s visit to the charity before Christmas where she wore a red dress and beat on some drums. Anyway it quoted the head of the charity saying some palaver like: the Duchess came here and she interacted with the children better than teachers and therapists who do this day in and day out, she just has such a special gift! It just read as such as blatant kiss-up and a backhanded slap to those who devote their lives to this “work” (I mean work in the REAL sense… not “work” as in “Kate’s work on mental illness”)
It just summed it all up for me how people blow smoke up Kate’s ass CONSTANTLY and I truly think Kate, William, and their staff accept it all with zero critical thinking. Its no wonder they are constantly releasing tone-deaf statements about her hitting the ground running and being so very keen to carry on her important work. Meanwhile, we are into February, she hasn’t done anything since Christmas except make a few appearances at church in Sandringham, and she has but one forthcoming engagement announced with a definite date.
The PR are desperate to push the ‘she’s another Diana’ narrative with these kinds of comments – hell she even dresses like her. Harry is like Diana in that children flocked to her, she was good with children and people in general.
Speaking of Diana, she was first known as “Shy Di” – and worked very hard with coaches to overcome it. I can’t think of a reason for Kate’s failure.
Hello magazine is very reliant on PR hacks as a rule. Heck, #poorjason probably wrote what the magazine printed. Did it mention that she stayed a total of 45 minutes? Probably not.
“how did we go from that to Kate’s stilted, uncomfortable, unable-to-look-up-from-her-notes speech-making”
Because when she DOESN’T read from a script, she says inane things like, “Can you . . . um . . . test the . . . the smell . . . of the tea . . . by . . . um . . . smelling it?” (That was a PLANNED visit to a tea shop, and she apparently doesn’t have the ability or desire to think of something to say ahead of time).
So, I suspect the Palace constantly drills it into her, “Do not deviate from the script. Do. not. deviate. from. the. script. DO. NOT. DEVIATE. FROM. THE. SCRIPT!!!” And, it wouldn’t surprise me if William also scolds her for not doing it correctly. So we end up with someone who’s deathly afraid of making a mistake, and therefore looks back down at the script every two words.
If true, I think it’s karma for the fact that she does not. give. a. f*ck.
I guess she could start practicing speeches then?
And for visits, she can ask Jason and his team what little bit of chit chat lines she could say at a themed event?
But if she comes unprepared and has no clue what to say or how to say it, then that’s on her. If there’s a problem, she should be smart enough to have some forethought on how to avoid the problems. Does she not have any memory of previous outings that she cannot have any critical judgement of them and so she can’t improve herself?
I guessed the Queen “forced” her to take part in this to 😉
I kid. I kid
I think it is entirely possible that she genuinely believes that her role is to be a beautiful socialite. With some “charity work” thrown in for good measure.
She has lots of fans and sells magazines, and she probably truly believes she’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to do.
Somehow I get the impression that she *does* think she works hard.
Saw in one of the newspapers that Pippa Middleton was staying with her latest boyfriend in one of his family’s homes on a large estate fairly near where I live.
Then read that Roger Moore, the actor, was bumped off his seat on a London to Glasgow plane so that Kate could sit there. Kate was very nice though and spoke quite a bit to him and his wife (quoting what Roger Moore said!).
If this happened recently it could be that Kate has just spent some time with Pippa in north of Scotland.
If Kate genuinely has trouble making speeches then I am very sorry for her as she will be expected to do this. I am shy and used to go through whole meetings at work when I could not utter a word. I also like poetry and a year ago tried to join a poetry group where we each read out a poem. Not rocket science or probably not even difficult for most people but I could not recite the poem. Just froze. Would have loved to have been part of this group.