James Middleton hasn’t been in the news that much this year. There were only a few updates about him last year, and it was just basic stuff, like he and his fiancee Alizee Thevenet postponed their wedding because of the pandemic. There was also a vague claim that James was about to start a new business, something about freeze-dried raw dog food, which was interesting because James can’t keep a business up and running to save his life. His marshmallow company, Boomf, lost millions of dollars and that was after James had like two or three other failed businesses. He just keeps starting businesses and driving them into the ground through bad management and bad ideas. The only thing Boomf did, it seemed, was provide James an opportunity to line his pockets with “investment” money. Curious then that James and Alizee are now purchasing a pricey farmhouse in Bucklebury. From the Mail’s Talk of the Town column:

They’ve put the pretty Berkshire village of Bucklebury on the map due to their Royal connections. But are the Middleton family hoping to make the area a mini-fiefdom of their own? I only ask because the Duchess of Cambridge’s brother James has just snapped up the family’s fourth property in the village – a £1.45 million pad to share with his fiancee, Alizee Thevenet.

It’s a four-bedroom Grade II listed period farmhouse with beams and leaded windows in a village on the Bucklebury fringes.

It means Kate’s family are all now near-neighbours, with parents Carole and Michael living in a £4.7 million Georgian manor house in the village, while her sister Pippa recently bought Bucklebury Farm Park, a petting zoo which is a favourite of Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

James’s move means the Middletons own three properties in the area, having sold one. The original family home, the £1.5 million Oak Acre, where Kate and William met in secret during breaks from St Andrews University, was sold a few years after they married.

Mind you, tongues may well be wagging in the village about how James has managed to afford his new home, as two-and-a-half years ago his novelty marshmallow company Boomf was posting losses of £3 million. Happily, business is now boomfing and he seems to have found his feet after meeting Alizee, a wealthy French financier.

[From The Daily Mail]

It’s more than possible that Alizee is financing much of their life together. I think that’s quite likely, actually, that Alizee is the wealthy one and she’s the one putting up the down payment. But if you were financing a life with a failed businessman, would you choose to buy a home just a stone’s throw away from his enabling parents? Yeeesh. James based his sad Boomf company in Bucklebury, so perhaps he’s starting his dog food company there too. Oh, God, Alizee is going to have to finance that too, right? With some help from Pippa’s husband, Terribly Moderately Wealthy James Matthews. The Middletons continue to grift their partners for cash, huh? And why does everything have to be in Bucklebury? Is it because that’s where the family’s grow-operation is located?

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