Carole Middleton gave an interview to Good Housekeeping UK back in January, apparently. How was she to know that the cover and cover interview would come out in the middle of a particularly toxic royal media cycle? So she called up several media outlets to let them know that she, the Queen of the nation, would not bother to promote this magazine cover. And if that announcement happened to draw more attention to her Good Housekeeping cover, well, how was she to know? Poor Carole, so dignified and regal, she never puts a foot wrong! Good Housekeeping released some excerpts from the interview too:
What a typical day looks like at her company, Party Pieces. “The business has a CEO now, so I have the luxury of being able to focus on new ideas and how to grow, which is always an enjoyable challenge. We’re currently working on the very first range of Party Pieces own-brand tableware for children’s parties, and that is a real passion project. I’m still hands-on and love going to our warehouse and seeing where the orders are going. I have a wonderful team of people, some of whom have stayed with me since the early days.”
Life as a grandmother: As a grandmother to the children of daughters Catherine and Pippa, Carole describes herself as ‘hands on’. “I want to run down the hills, climb the trees and go through the tunnel at the playground,” she says. “As long as I am able to, that’s what I’ll be doing. I cook with them, I muck around dancing, we go on bike rides.”
Her work ethic: “I’m not someone to sit on the sofa for a long time. I have a lot of energy and enjoy my work. I grew up watching my parents, who both worked extremely hard. My father was a builder, and my mother worked part-time in a jewellery shop and later, would go to work in a factory. I remember them working hard to make ends meet and give us a lifestyle.”
The truth is, the devil works hard but Carole works harder. That’s always been the case – she not only ran a successful business for decades, she also raised three kids and, like an anxious mother out of a Jane Austen novel, she pushed her local Bucklebury beauties into the highest echelons of British society in an attempt to make “smart matches” for all of them. Being a social climber who is trying to throw her daughters in the paths of eligible, titled, rich men is a full-time occupation all on its own. The fact that she was running a business at the same time is crazy! Anyway, she’s the Kris Jenner of Britain and I’m actually saying that with respect. I just wish Carole’s kids had inherited her work ethic.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.
She looks lovely on the cover. I know there’s some photoshopping involved there, but she always looks quite younger than her age and happy, unlike her daughters.
Yes, a lot of that is the lighting.
Of course she’s happy. Middleton blood is in the future, future, future King. Actually I think Pippa is happy too.
To me it seems like every Middleton is quite happy…with one major exception.
She looks good on that cover — quite fit.
The ‘success’ of PP is highly suspect, as is her desperate attempt to sell it in the face of it failing. A dive into it around the time of the wedding showed it couldn’t have supported the lifestyle the Middletons were living. It all comes back to shady Uncle Gary and his shady money.
More pro-Middleton PR. William must be visiting the Rose bushes more often.
There is zero chance that PP turns a profit in the millions per year, which would have supported their lifestyle. I think James Middleton’s ventures are a testament to the fact that these people have no actual business sense. I stand by my suspicion that PP is a front for something. Allegedly 🙂
The shady financial set up, off-shore accounts, the LLC-type business instead of something more logical/legal? When the Windsors decide to throw the Middletons to the wolves, there’s plenty of fodder in PP’s financials.
Wasn’t there a report a while back about a bust on a marijuana facility near/at their property?
Weeds Maker Carol the Great.
There is a lot being covered up with the Middletons and it dates from long before Kate set eyes on William. There was no inherited money when Carole married Michael Middleton. Kate’s childhood home was a modest semi-detached, as shown in ‘Cambridge Homes’ ‘teatime with the Cambridges’ blog 2019. The children attended the local village school.
That first house was bought with a mortgage. The move to Oak Acre was bought withno additional mortgage and supposedly financed by their business profits. They also bought adjoining land for £250,000 cash. The children were by then attending fee-paying schools.
Questions about the Middleton finances sparked a few investigations and the general conclusion was that that Party Pieces could not have generated the kind of money they were spending. Even allowing for the practice, which was legal at the time, of selling customer data. By the time Kate and William were at university the Middletons had bought a London flat, for cash. They were also taking family holidays in Mustique as well as holidays in Gary Goldsmith’s Ibiza ‘Maison de Bang Bang’ .
Gary Goldsmith’s finances are also open to question. On the surface he was running a recruitment company which made him a multi-millionnaire in his twenties. However, he is an admitted drug-dealer and has also boasted about being able to supply women for sex(although he later retracted this) .
Based on this background there is a suspicion of money-laundering. Money made from drug dealing and other illicit activities can be processed through legitimate businesses and an operation importing large quantities of low-value items is a good cover. Party Pieces has always been run like a small private business. I’m no expert in this but it seems the Middletons have been able to legally avoid publishing detailed accounts.
This. There’s no way the silly tat in their catalogs/website could do anything more than pay the overhead costs. It was data selling and Uncle Gary’s shady finances that paid for their life.
Not to mention the fact that the silly tat they churn out is majorly at odds with William’s alleged environmental position. I winced when I read about her new range of ‘own brand tableware for children’s parties’. The last thing this planet needs is more throwaway plastic crap.
Carole is a fit, handsome woman. But I personally think she could have stunned and this misses the mark by a mile. The creative director of Good Housekeeping needs to go right along with the palace PR team. Ouch, that cover hurts my eyes and that dress. It’s like an accident on the highway, you don’t want to look, but you have to.
Also, social climbing at the level the Middletons have played is not a game for the faint-hearted. And the rules are as complicated and unforgiving as they were in Jane Austen’s time. I’m just not sure what you really win when you “win.” Right, Kate? Oh yeah, you will be the Queen (maybe) and your children royalty, but you really sold 100% of your soul to get there.
Queen Consort, and an empty shell of her former self, and one that’s too painfully thin.
All I can say is that the Cambridge kids, especially Charlotte and Louis, will need to have very strong mental health in the future and avoid marrying any minority or just don’t marry. When the Charles, Middleton and William courts collide, they’re going to be collateral damage.
yup, agree with these comments. She totally sold her soul, be careful what you wish for!
All the comments but the dress, I actually like the dress!
I like the material pattern, but I’m not big on the dress sleeves. I have a set of sheets that look like her dress.
Yup. I have no respect for Carole Middleton’s social climbing for that reason. In PR, the veneer of honesty is important if you want people to take you at your word. But the whole PR scheme from the Middletons has always been fake fake fake fake fake. There is a deep strain of self-consciousness in all of their PR that sticks out like a sore fucking thumb, and people pick up on that shit, and they start to dislike you deeply because they can tell you’re pretending to be something you’re not.
Yeah, I feel like you can say a lot about Carole, and we do here, lol, but you cant say the woman doesnt have a work ethic or hustle. Its just weird that it seems her primary focus in life was making sure her kids didnt HAVE to work or hustle.
It’s also too bad she helped attacked another woman with a work ethic. At least she’s not shading Meghan in this article, but sadly since Kate’s twisted sense of competition was ingrained by Carole herself, they pushed out a woman who could have been an ally and support for Kate in the future. Instead Kate acted like a jealous petty bitch and her actions have now been exposed to the world.
All true, so my question is why is this awful woman in the news at ALL? Who cares where she sits? “I’m being quiet out of respect for Prince Philip” (har har) and now this? Ugh.
@Nic and of course that was part of the problem with Meghan from Carole’s perspective, wasnt it? Meghan was going to outwork and outshine Kate and Carole could not allow that.
She’s got hustle alright, but I think her hustle is misdirected. If she taught her daughters work ethic instead of working the hardest to trash other women to bag rich aristo men, they would be in a much better position than they are in now.
They may be married but they are probably very miserable. Pippa might be better off, but she’s still trapped in her marriage like Kate is. The Matthews family are just as ratchet as the royals. The only thing both sisters have ever achieved in life was getting married, they don’t want to give that up, especially as everyone else in those circles don’t want anything to do with them.
Atleast Kris Jenner taught her daughters to work. They have their own money and don’t need to rely on men.
What happens when Carole is no longer around to orchestrate the Cambridge marriage? No matter how cunning Carole may be, she isn’t going to live forever. Kate doesn’t have street smarts and ruthlessness it takes to manipulate both William and the British press.
@ Bess, excellent point!! What will Keen Karen do when mummy is gone? SOL, that’s what will happen! Keen will stumble, fall and explode due to savvy bullying and twisting the RR’s around her petty hands.
In all honesty, I’d rather be a Middleton than a Kardashian. I don’t want to have to to do the kind of work Kim does — breaking the internet with salaciousness and whatever else — to have gotten where she is (especially the purposely leaked sex tape). Yeah, I guess it’s a kind of work but… there’s got to be a better example of work ethic. Working doesn’t always mean it’s work that I would necessarily be proud of. If that’s what Kim or anyone else is interested in, I don’t begrudge her or anybody else that line of fulfilment. But I know I wouldn’t want to do it.
I can see what you’re saying, Observing.
But I think Kate et al would kill to have the kind of clout to “break the Internet” in any way.
And personally….the most clicks the Cambridges get are when they use the kids as a PR shield which Carole has fully endorsed and participated in. I’m not a Kardashian fan or follower at all, I think that’s worse than a salacious picture (and I’m sure the Kardashians have done this too with their kids but it doesn’t get the disproportionately large amount of clicks as with the Cambridges, unless I’m wrong?) But that’s just me.
Nothing could convince me that being Kim Kardashian is worth it. Or Khloe. Maybe the one that’s a little quieter and low key might be plausible (Courtney? — I get the sense she’d rather not do this kind of work), but I think you have to have really thick skin to handle the idea of your success building forward from a purposely leaked sex tape. I think it’s a bit strange to presume most people have the desire for or ability to cope with that.
I understand the rest of your comment.
I didn’t say anything about most people wanting to leak a sex tape for fame. I said if Kate and her family thought there was a way for them to break the Internet like that they’d jump on it. Not with salacious images but anything else they could.
Kate has marketed her womb and she’s only known for being a broodmare, so how is she any better than Kim K? At least Kim profited from her tape. And let’s not forget the multiple flashing incidents where Kate revealed as much as Kim has to the public. The main difference between Kate and Kim is that Kim was honest about selling her sexuality whereas Kate played the acceptable game of hiding it through the pursuit of marriage. The years she spent waiting for a proposal were spent answering William’s booty calls when he felt like it. And the multiple walks of shame with her overnight bag were caught by the paps more than once, which isn’t the sign of a life of purity. She endured a lot of humiliation to finally get that proposal and in the end she will have far less agency than Kim K.
I don’t even like Kim K, but we can’t pretend that she and Kate Middleton are that different. They both used their bodies to acquire money and status. The only difference is that it still remains socially acceptable to do what Kate did, even if most women with self respect would not have done a fraction of what she did to catch a rich man.
Ultimately, that’s why Kim Kardashian manages to break the internet though. She wouldn’t be able to break the internet if she didn’t have that as the starting point of how her “career” progressed. We can’t pretend she breaks the internet because she’s an interesting person without some hint of scandal attached. Even with that, she’s still kind of a boring person. Go figure.
It’s not like she’s breaking the internet because she can sing like Mariah Carey or throw a football like Tom Brady. And it’s not like she’s breaking the internet because she’s the best reality show personality of all time either.
I don’t even actively hate Kim Kardashian. She exists in the fame game for a reason, I guess. Whatever floats her boat. And there is a space for her type of “entertainment” that generates clicks. But we all know why she breaks the internet and other celebrities don’t (even though they’re more talented). I’m sure Gwyneth Paltrow would like to break the internet too, but even she has her limits. We all do.
Luxury of working on new ideas is a strange way to say she is focusing on her pot farm.
🤣🤣
Spare me. Middleton blood has seen to much, but apparently does not extend to inherited work ethic. Is Carole trying to run for queen ? Maybe William should have married her, except then there would be no little Cambridges. Huh.
She’s always wanted to be the new beloved Queen Mum, manipulative power behind the throne.
Forgive me, I’ve been watching a lot of Starz shows. I think she’s running to be My Lady the Queen’s Mother. Mark my words, if Carole is still alive when Cain becomes king, she will be given a title.
She’ll have to outlive Charles, lol. He comes from a pair of near centenarians.
Carole won’t ever be given a title directly. It would be given to Michael so he needs to be alive for that to happen. Charles will never do it but William might.
Although considering how there is a massive article in the Times showing how useless the hereditary House of Lords currently are, there will be less tolerance for a vanity title to the parents of the commoner Queen as time goes on, especially as the effects of Brexit start to punish the working class and let’s the elites profit further. The whole point of Kate was to be considered common and if her parents get a title then she is simply more of the same. No one ever said William was smart, but I don’t think he will feel the need to listen to Carole once or if he is ever actually monarch.
Eh W is dumb af so he can be easily manipulated by Carole. Carole manipulated dumb and dumber to get married. I say give her that silly title (or not), they’re all silly.
I am with Merricat. I don’t see Carole outliving Charles, especially since Carol is or was a smoker.
Can you imagine the level of sh!t Meghan would get if Doria was on the cover of a magazine? That’s all I can think of looking at this.
What are the Middleton’s “standing” in society? I never really understood that. They appear to be fairly middle/upper class people to me, but not aristocrats or anything like that. How did Kate even make it into the royal circles?
For a woman with such a work ethic, it is strange that she raised 3 children without a work ethic.
James can’t hold a job unless it’s from family, when he is not bankrupting it.
Pippa, had so many work opportunities thrown at her, none she was successful at.
Kate, oh Kate.
I’m interested to see how James’s new dog food business goes because this is something he is actually passionate about.
Yeah James seems to have actually found a niche. I think he truly cares about working with dogs and that they’ve helped his mental health so I’m happy to see him figuring it out.
That’s part of why we’ve seen all these Carole interviews in the last four years. The public embraced Doria, they never liked Carole. Mummy Carole’s ego and nose are out of joint.
The Middletons are commoners with money. Kate was the only one who wanted the job of wife to William, and Carole made certain that Kate had every opportunity to be available to William. None of the Middletons, including Kate, are aristocrats; that is a born-into situation.
Interesting. Thanks!
Exactly this. They are seen by established families as new money upstarts, and with not that much money either. They are far from aristocratic. As I’ve said before, and not wanting to sound too ra ra ra about it, my partner has mixed with the fringes of that group and said it was a standing joke that the Middleton daughters were just hanging around and hanging on. He also said that Kate very quickly became thinner, leading up to the engagement. He thought it was very sad.
I would imagine that their “standing in society” is mixed. Kate is the future future Queen consort, and Pippa married a billionaire whose daddy bought a Scottish castle that included the title. Pippa has access to actual money and Kate married the ultimate aristocrat. I suspect Kate got into the aristo circles because the Middletons (through Party Pieces or Dodgy Uncle Gary) have cash. Cash now gets you into the good schools that you once needed “good breeding” (ew!) for. Once you’re in the same schools as the aristo children it’s smooth sailing for Carole from there.
but as we’ve read or analyzed afterwards from the Tatler piece, it seems that the aristos have never really fully embraced Kate as their own…
I really doubt that Pippa’s husband is a billionaire. Millionaire, maybe.
Daddy Middleton was a pilot, mommy Middleton was a flight attendant. Her iffy brother Gary Goldsmith made gazillions in some sort of IT recruitment business and like has been financing Party Pieces, but his reputation is shady. He’s had 4 wives, the last of which he knocked out cold in a domestic incident in 2017 and was fined 5 thousand pounds. He hates the Sussexes and has done a couple of online rants telling them to STFU, and has clearly got some issues with the Bolivian marching powder. Charming fellow…
Michael Middleton was actually a flight dispatcher. He started training as a pilot but never completed it. His father WAS a pilot though and – according to the internet – flew alongside Prince Philip on some tour.
I keep thinking about this as well, Case. Remember the meltdowns because they THOUGHT Doria was going to talk to Oprah and how Doria was there for Meghan’s first project? Not a peep about this cover. That’s what happens when you are white and sell your soul to the British tabloids.
I always got bad vibes from Carole.
Agree. Obviously we can never actually know what she’s like but from stories from her staff as well as the way she plays the media and has managed her children, I suspect that she may every bit as unpleasant and ruthless in pursuit of what she wants as her deeply distasteful brother.
There are plenty of stories out there that Carole was at KP a lot and ordering around staff like they were her own. She particularly wanted a Chablis in the evening according to these stories. Now perhaps they are fiction, but it matches her difficult approach with her own employees also reported so there is a pattern.
The housekeeper and her husband (groundsman) quit Anmer after only five months. Five months over Christmas when the Middletons all moved in and wouldn’t leave. No wonder those staff fled back to the main house at Sandringham.
@ Case, omg, the ratchet rota and the trolls would have been all over this, if Ms. Doris was giving this interview.
I’m surprised we haven’t seen Kate in this dress. Not enough buttons?
Holy photoshop – even thou she’s an attractive woman they still ‘shopped her to within an inch of her life. You can clearly see that Kate looks like her mother in that cover shot.
Love or loathe her, you cannot deny her drive and ambition. She and Mike made PP successful (though not as successful as they want us to believe). Its a shame that none of her children have that drive – they are only where they are because of Carole.
I have no problem with her drive or ambition. Meghan has drive and ambition but she is also
a compassionate, ethical and amiable person. These people…are not. They just want to royal rumble each other to the top.
Yes, I can loathe the drive and ambition that caused her to attack Meghan publicy and privately for the past four years.
Actually, we can deny her “drive” if not her ambition, since Party Pieces is a definite “front” for data selling and sex trafficking money etc.
I looked at the Party Pieces offerings a while back out of curiosity and it’s literally just party city tacky garbage. Also, how is it that Carole can literally make money off the royals by selling themed merchandise around each family member, (including Archie & Meghan!) and that’s considered fine and regal and respectable but netflix and spotify are a bridge too far?
(Incidentally, eco-warrior Will might want to talk to his mother-in-law about hocking almost exclusively balloons and plastic, not exactly earth-friendly.)
I saw your comment so went on their site. I don’t see anything royal-themed at all. There are some Union Jack flags and stuff, but nothing about Archie, Meghan, the Queen, royals, even her daughter. Please share a link, cuz I couldn’t find anything!
Lord yes, they’ve always tagged onto royal events. Royal weddings, prince and princess births, the Jubilee. They were called to the carpet a couple of times for copyright infringement (Olympics?).
Also rightly criticized for 1) selling items made by child labour in Mexico and 2) repeatedly selling costumes that sexualize young children or that encourage violence.
The cake with Archie’s name in it was probably removed, but it was definitely there around the time of his first birthday. It may show up again this year for his second.
She is literally sitting on a sofa in this photo.
If Kate had Carole’s work ethic, William never would have married her. Someone with a decent work ethic would never have put up
With the Waity Katey garbage either.
I saw a pap picture of her from yesterday may be? Looking that cover now and comparing the other pic it looks like IG vs Real life lol
And I want to be realistic here, but can a party pieces business make you a millionaire? I…doubt.
It can’t – her rich but shady brother Gary financed it.
No, it can’t. Plus their stuff is comparable to what you would buy at the dollar store. If it was so successful they would branch out but they haven’t. Plus a lot of customers have complained about their horrible customer service.
How many parties are happening in the Uk right now anyway? It has been in lockdown more than once over the past year. And party supplies aren’t exactly something you spend money on if your employment is precarious.
I’m sorry, but I refuse to accept that even the most rabid fans of the royal family give enough of a shit about Carole Middleton to justify slapping her mug on a magazine cover.
Lol. Agreed.
Seriously. I just find this embarrassing.
No kidding. When I saw this, I thought, huh? She’s just a shameless manipulative woman who sold out her elder daughter to a balding rage monster just to get closer to Royal status for herself. Her playing media games will all end in tears when Willnot leaves Cannot and H&M soar to new heights. She’s far worse than Mrs Bennet! I pity Michael Middleton.
“ “I’m not someone to sit on the sofa for a long time.”
Unless Williams head is in her lap.
WHOA. Here’s the tea!
Why is this woman on a magazine cover? Why is she even giving an interview as if anyone cares?
Her “work ethic” is a complete fabrication since their fortune is built on grifting and lies (a combination of data selling and Uncle Gary’s IT business/sex trafficking/drug trafficking money). She’s failed to raise any of her children into people with integrity or drive. She’s shaded Meghan countless times through direct quotations of her own or leaks to magazines, participating in that bullying.
And people have the nerve to call Doria tacky…
Who called Doria tacky?! I WILL FIGHT THEM.
The tabloid comments about her nose ring and hair at the wedding are an example.
People are trash, lol.
I thought Doria was the embodiment of taste and dignity at her daughter’s wedding. Carole looked like the cat that got the cream at Kate’s.
Doria, who is better educated than all the royals and Middleton? Who has worked all her life to help others and has the one job that helps others and produces anything of value to society? Who we’ve never heard a peep from and who does not trade on her royal association? Who has more class in her pinky than the lot of them combined? The NERVE.
This ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️! OMG, Doria is the epitome of class v crass Middleton 😳
Looking at the pictures of Carole, I can see Kate wearing all of the same clothes, if she hasn’t already. So I think Carole must be Kate’s stylist in some way? It’s truly uncanny how similar their styles are.
They’ve worn each other’s clothes before. Carole really wants to be that “not like a regular mom, she’s a cool mom/yummy mummy” and sharing clothes with Kate helps that, in her mind, I’m sure.
I suspect Carole is Kate’s real stylist. Kate dresses like someone a generation older than she actually is.
I do think Carole picks out a lot of her clothes. And the funny thing is, Carole is built different from Kate, so the stuff works on Carole much better than it does on Kate. I mean some of the dresses are still really frumpy, but Carole also has been seen wearing some dresses to Wimbledon and the like where she looks so much better than Kate. Even look at her in these pictures from Ascot – she’s in a simple pale blue dress and Kate is in that lace monstrosity.
A couple years ago, Carole was accused of bullying her staff. I wonder if this is why she said, “I have a wonderful team of people, some of whom have stayed with me since the early days.” Wouldn’t want any of those stories to come out now that Meghan was accused of bullying.
This is how they kept the real photographer quiet, when they were lying that Kate did the photography for PP. All photos are credited to MillieP, but she’s never said a peep. Guess who was hired to do the private wedding photos of W&K? And given permission to dictate a glowing insider story about the wedding to the press. Helped her promote her wedding photo business, and hey, she keeps quiet about who did all the work.
So Party Pieces is doing well one year after a global pandemic Shut down gatherings? Ok.
Interesting how she can be on magazine covers and say whatever without getting zero pushback for capitalizing on her daughter’s position and her royal adjacency. She’s been doing this for years. She is one of those “ palace sources” and if she could get away with it, would be inking deals for a reality show.
As someone else mentioned above, Doria got slammed for even the suggestion of doing an interview with Oprah and meanwhile this one has done two magazine covers in the past year, something she hasn’t done before. And she slammed Meghan in the first one. The privilege afforded to white mediocrity is astounding. None of her kids have a work ethic and the women are only praised for pursuing and marrying rich men. At least Kris Jenner is honest about monetizing her kids. Carole Middleton pretends she didn’t do the exact same, but I would argue she’s done worse because she’s tried to paint “chasing a rich man” as something noble and not a soul crushing experience that ends up making you unhappy in the end and promotes sexist and repressive ideology.
And, we care because?????
“Florals. For spring. Groundbreaking.”
LOL @RedWeatherTiger right? So much about this cover is funny. I keep making up what it says behind her head. Best Selling Lonely Magazine, Lackluster, Limiting, Leaflet, Lesser, Leaden. I don’t want to look it up. I’ll just keep filling it in.
She slammed Harry and Meghan with this one too- remember that she called off this cover, because she didn’t want to bring the attention to her while Philip was in hospital. And she called a tabloid to give them that story lol
And there is a mother who willingly encouraged her daughter to foresake any career, charity work, life experience beyond pursuing a man who treats her with disdain.
+1
It is about subtext. One looks beyond the words towards the behaviour. It is all about social status and the anxiety it triggers in some people, but it seems much more attainable present times, due to the elevation of acquisition of wealth.
Money gave her children the proximity, she provided the wiles, fulfilled her wildest dreams and cannot/would not, or not allow to stop and go away so she can be missed.
Doria’s dignity is innate and peaceful not performative.
On an aside, were there any grow-op updates ?
I’ve always liked Carole and the Middleton bunch. I especially like the compassion his family and the press have shown James about his struggles with depression. From a distance it looks as if they support each other.
It would be nice if Carole would show some compassion to those outside her family and not make snide remarks in interviews and not pass on stories to royal reporters.
They are a classic enmeshed family and deeply dysfunctional. Carole had a pic of William as her phone wallpaper; sided and sides with him in arguments; has her own competition with, and encourages competition between, her daughters.
Carole worked hard so her children wouldn’t have to.
Carole’s comments about her parents stuck out to me. Carole Middleton is desperate for the acceptance of the upper class posh toffs, in spite of the snobbery and classism that they have directed her way, on account of her background and her family. But here, in this interview, she is highlighting that same background that she so often chooses to downplay and disregard when it comes up in other contexts. There are a lot of dimensions to this whole thing, and it exposes just how disingenuous the whole Middleton family marketing and PR attempts are in general.
Carole Middleton only ever brings up her parents, or her “middle-class” upbringing, when it comes to certain audiences, and to fulfill a certain purpose. She presents herself and the Middletons as “normal” 1) when they’re talking to the plebs, 2) when they want to score points and dunk on the aristocracy by emphasizing the fact that William married Kate, and not any one of them, or 3) when Carole wants to prove how useful she and Kate can be in augmenting the royal PR to appeal to the masses, which they do by highlighting how the Middletons are such a fresh, modern side of the monarchy. It’s another element to the Cambridge “middle class, little England” family portrait, as it were.
But when it comes to getting acceptance and respect from the toffs, she and Kate have no problems downplaying, if not disparaging, her middle class background with ease. For the upper class toffs, Carole’s background is not something impressive, but rather something shameful, something that makes her beneath them and worthy of their disrespect, and Carole obliges that belief by only ever trotting out her middle-class background story when it’s most convenient for her, and discarding it when it gets in the way of her and Kate being accepted by the posh crowd.
Would she have talked about how her father was a builder, and how her mother worked in a factory, if this were an interview for the Tatler, or Town and Country? Has she ever? What has her messaging actually been, in those circumstances, and how does it differ from what she’s presenting here? How does the reality of her, and Kate’s, actions differ from the message she’s repping here? How much can you really say that you are happy and proud and comfortable with your background, when it’s only ever brought up in the context of buying you, your daughter, and the RF, good PR from the public, all while the truth about how you’re actually being treated by the people you’ve chosen to surround yourself with, and whose company you aspire to, is out there? The truth simply doesn’t jive with the “middle class, little England, yummy mummy, hands-on grandma” messaging, because people can sense the reality of the contempt that actually exists, and Carole can’t fool anyone on that.
Also worth mentioning–what Carole is saying here about her parents is also essentially the whole “they worked hard to pull themselves up from their boostraps” Tory messaging. The whole line about how she watched both her parents “work very hard” could pretty much be a Margaret Thatcher quote, tbh, which is also a good indication of who exactly “middle class” Carole, daughter of a “builder” and a “factory worker” is attempting to signal too. Something tells me that it’s not a diverse population that she’s attempting to signal to, and overall, the whole thing is a fumbling PR attempt at class solidarity to attempt to portray the royal family in a better light, especially considering recent events. And Karen Midds and Karen Midds Jr her daughter can honestly fuck all the way off with that.
Carole strikes me as one of those parents that totally dominates her children. I think it works for some kids, and it seems she is genuinely close to all of them (spends time with them, watches their kids, goes on their vacations etc.). But it wouldn’t work for a child who had any kind of rebellious streak or boundaries in adulthood. Personally, I don’t sense Kate or James to be very happy people, but it worked out fine for Pippa. Kate was pushed into her marriage by her mother and James has been propped up by his parents through adulthood.
That dress is almost hypnotic… I am mesmerized by the tackiness of it
I don’t think Carole Middleton holds a candle to Kris Jenner. Kris manufactured a tv series out of thin air and a sex tape. Her daughters all became millionaires, two are shooting for billionaire, on their own and not through spouses. Carole’s business model is just to be the Wisteria sisters, marry well, and nothing more. Kris would have been a far better sounding board during Kate’s marriage and drama and would not have such a conspicuous heavy hand in the press.
She is a #girlboss 💅💗💗
Doria would never…
posing for the cover of a magazine? That’s pretty tacky for the grandmother of the FFF king, no? I mean, it was the height of shame when Meghan guest edited Vogue and, instead of highlighting herself, chose to shine the spotlight on deserving people who actually DO things…