For all you last-minute shoppers, there is only four days left to get your bid in on Princess Beatrice's royal wedding hat.
The much mocked chapeau designed by Philip Treacy has been listed on eBay in order to make money for the Little Bee Initiative, a charitable organization set up by the princess to raise money for Children in Crisis and UNICEF.
As of 10:15 a.m. Wednesday, the highest bid is $28,900 (Canadian). British entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne opened the bidding last week at $8,000. Since then, bidders have included Australian children's group The Wiggles, who offered $28,000, according to Bang Showbiz.
"We wear some pretty crazy costumes on stage, but this hat beats them all -- it could bring about an Australian republic all by itself," said Blue Wiggle Anthony Field.
"When we heard about the auction we knew we had to bid -- we're ambassadors for UNICEF and we think it's great that Princess Beatrice has chosen to support children in great need."
For her part, Beatrice is enjoying all the attention the hat has drawn. "I hope whoever wins the auction has as much fun with the hat as I have."
The hat has inspired a mountain of photo-shopped spoofs on Facebook.
In case William and Kate get tired of relaxing in their luxurious digs in the Seychelles, the Royal couple has chartered a fast yacht to take them among the islands.
According to the Sun in London, the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge have rented the Sea Stream, a 76-foot boat that can be yours for a modest $40,000 per week.
According to the newspaper article, the royal couple chartered the boat to jet between the islands of Praslin and La Digue.
The royal couple dined on sushi, Parma ham and other delicacies during their stay on the 2006 Ferretti motor yacht -- said to be the fastest luxury crewed boat for rent in the paradise island group.
Top speed is 25 knots and there's room for eight guests in four cabins, each one equipped with a TV/DVD entertainment system.
It's not exactly the Royal Yacht Britannia, but that grand old ship was decomissioned in 1997 after nearly 1,000 official voyages.
The Royal Yacht Britannia is seen in Toronto in this 1984 photo.
Among those voyages was a stop in Toronto in 1991, which caused a lot of excitement in the city. Prince Charles and Princess Diana were on a visit to Ontario in October of that year, and were joined by Princes William and Harry. Some photos from that visit can be found in our Prince William gallery.
Here are some PDFs from the Toronto Star during the Royal visit:
Hold off on that talk about Prince Harry following his brother William down the matrimonial aisle.
The word out of London is that the Harry has split with his long-time girlfriend Chelsy Davy. Again.
The couple has reportedly ended their seven-year relationship that has become famous for its on-again, off-again status.
"Even though Chelsy and Harry have very strong feelings for one another, Chelsy had to let him go,” a friend has told the UK magazine Grazia. “They've been together so long the next stage would be an engagement."
The breaking point may have been last month’s royal wedding, when Davy had a first-hand look (right photo) at what a new member of the Royal Family has to go through.
"Harry is besotted with Chelsy,” another source told the magazine. “She is the love of his life, but Chelsy is adamant she doesn't want to lose her independence.”
The Zimbabwe-born Davy, a lawyer in training, was Harry’s date for the royal wedding and it was thought the pair was once again on the road to marriage after splitting last year.
However, the Daily News reported last week that Davy, 25, will spend the summer travelling through Europe with her friend Melissa Percy, sans Harry. There was a tentative plan to re-unite in Spain at the end of July.
The source of much of the couple’s friction over the last few years had been Harry’s “bad boy” escapades. While her re-emergence at the royal wedding was a sign of better times, it probably didn’t help that the media did some wild post-wedding speculation on the potential of Harry romancing Pippa Middleton, the maid of honour for her sister Kate.
Of course, the Windsor boys have had a checkered history with women. Before Prince William finally popped the question to Kate Middleton, the pair had also gone through a separation.
Queen Elizabeth inspects a Guard of Honour at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin on Tuesday. It's the first by a British monarch since Ireland's independence. (Reuters)
One of Queen Elizabeth’s strengths has always been to put people around her at ease.
That is being tested this week on her visit to Ireland, where tensions between the English and the Irish are knotted in a long, bloody history with only temporary bouts of peace.
That is where the 85-year-old Queen finds herself today, trying to keep the march toward peaceful co-existence going.
Still, being the first British monarch since George V to visit the republic in 100 years, any air of celebration or reconciliation is tainted with stifling security and bomb threats.
Much of the Irish media are taking a cautious, almost friendly approach to the visit. Some excerpts from their editorials:
“The real significance of the event lies, less in being extraordinary, than in being pleasantly and properly ordinary. It is at last possible to say that the relationship between Britain and Ireland is simply normal. It is what it ought to be between neighbouring countries bound together by strong economic, political, cultural, social,sporting and personal ties.”
… “Queen Elizabeth is welcome as a remarkable woman in her own right, as a figure to whom a significant minority on this island give allegiance and, above all, as a symbol of the mutual affection and common interests of two separate but closely connected countries.”
“Unreasonable though (republicans) can be, they may have a point when they say that the visit is premature. What we have, at present, is an amicable modus vivendi, not a final resolution of the historic differences between Britain and Ireland. A State visit should have been held in reserve to mark that final resolution.
“There is every reason to expect that she will enjoy herself. We her hosts should put aside our misgivings, try to ignore the threats and the sealed manhole covers, and enjoy ourselves too.”
"Irrespective of anybody’s feelings about the monarchy we should respect the choice of the British people to retain their own symbols of governance, just as we expect others to respect the form we have chosen. Nobody is suggesting that the queen’s visit means that we should change our system. Surely we have the confidence and maturity to appreciate this. Any suggestion to the contrary is not just an insult to the British queen, but an insult to the Irish people."
The Duke of Edinburgh rides through the grounds of Windsor Castle during the Royal Windsor Horse Show last week. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
It’s not a shock to learn that the Royal Family makes mistakes. To have them actually admit it is another thing.
In a revealing TV interview to be aired next week in the UK, Prince Philip opened up on a number of topics as he closes in on his 90th birthday and his 60th year as the Queen’s consort.
Asked if he had any regrets, the Duke of Edinburgh replied: “Well yes, I would rather have not made the mistakes I did make, but I’m not telling you what they were.”
The prince would not elaborate to ITV interviewer Alan Titchmarsh, but at least a few of those regrets may entail some of the verbal missteps he has made over the years.
Here’s a few:
■ He once asked a Scottish driving instructor: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”
■ During a tour of Australia, he asked a group of aborigines: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
■ Speaking to a group of British students in China, he told them: “If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.”
In the TV interview, Prince Philip also expressed some disappointment at giving up his naval career to serve his wife, Queen Elizabeth.
“I don’t know how difficult it was, it was naturally disappointing,” he said. “I had just been promoted to commander and the fact was that the most interesting part of my naval career was just starting.
“But then equally, if I stopped and thought about it, being married to the Queen, it seemed to me my first duty was to serve her in the best way I could.”
The duke also reserved some criticism for the British government, which retired the royal yacht Britannia in 1997 following 43 years of serving the monarchy.
“She should have had her steam turbines taken out and diesel engines put in,” he said. “She was as sound as a bell, and she could have gone on for another 50 years.”
It’s doubtful you’ll be seeing Prince William and his new bride Kate hauling their own suitcases around Canada, but there will definitely be a slimmed-down look to the couple’s much anticipated first foreign royal tour.
In an effort to “keep things simple,” the couple plans to embark on their 10-day tour of Canada (plus a few extra days in Los Angeles) with between 6-10 aides, according to the Daily Mail.
That may still sound like a lot to most common travellers, but it is about one-third the staff size that accompanies the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on foreign visits.
“Kate is very low maintenance. She did her own wedding-day make-up and is confident doing her make-up for the cameras,” a source told the London newspaper.
The Canadian tour, which kicks off Thursday, June 30 (likely in Ottawa), is viewed as the litmus test for the new Duchess of Cambridge, who has so far dabbled in pre-wedding day trips around the UK with Prince William.
While there have been rumblings that Pippa Middleton might go on the tour as her sister’s lady-in-waiting, it is more likely that Kate will keep her entourage to a minimum.
“She said she doesn’t want a lady-in-waiting,” said a Daily Mail source. “That may change but she’ll see how she copes on this tour.”
Among those who will be accompanying the couple are Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, William’s private secretary, and Sir David Manning, who acts as the couple’s senior advisor.
Besides being in Ottawa for Canada Day celebrations, William and Kate will be touching down in Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. It’s expected that one of the stops in Alberta will be the Aero Space Museum in Calgary. During the Second World War, Kate’s grandfather Peter was a flying instructor with the RAF on the site of the present-day museum.
It’s no real surprise that the couple has chosen Canada for their first foreign exposure. The country has a long friendly relationship with the royals and is almost a second home to some Britons. In a survey of UK expatriates earlier this year, Canada rated No. 1 as a destination. There are about 600,000 British expats living here.
It appears the Church of England does not have much of a sense of humour.
When T-Mobile decided to spoof the royal wedding with a mock music video, they rented a church in London, then hired a bunch of royal family lookalikes. They threw in the song ‘House of Love’ by East 17, a little dancing, and the inspired bit of marketing resulted in a YouTube hit that has surpassed 21 million views.
The church received about $5,500 for supplying the setting for the video.
But not everyone saw it as a nice bit of fun. A cleric complained to the Archdeacon of London about the “embarrassing” video, according to the Daily Mail. It was then suggested that the penance should be the donation of the church fee to one of Prince William’s charities.
“I think it is a sense-of-humour failure,” said Rev. Dr. Martin Dudley, who gave permission for St Bartholomew the Great church to be used in the video. “I wasn’t there at the filming of it but I thought the video was tremendously amusing and was just creating a sense of joy around the wedding.”
A spokesman for the Archdeacon told the Mail that a contribution to the prince’s charities would be a “nice gesture,” and the church would be happy to give Dr. Dudley “advice and guidance” the next time there was request to use his church in similar circumstances.
Dr. Dudley said the money is earmarked for charity work within the parish.
This isn’t the first time Dr. Dudley has run afoul of the church hierarchy. In 2008 he was chastised for presiding over a gay marriage between two priests.
Gambers rejoice
The royal wedding turned out to be a sweet day for gamblers, with many of the favourites coming through on the big day. For example, Irish betting site Paddy Power had the following favourites, among the things users could bet on.
Colour of Kate's dress: Ivory at 4/6. Bingo. Colour of hat the Queen will wear: Yellow at 4/1. Bingo.
Bookies did however manage to save an estimated £24,000 as Prince Phillip managed to remain awake throughout the ceremony – his odds were significantly slashed from 40/1 to 8/1 in the final days to the wedding. Bookies also didn’t have to pay out 6/1 odds on Kate Middleton leaving her Prince waiting for more than twelve minutes, as she was only a 20 seconds behind schedule.
Anyway, this is all ancient history. It's time for lucky gamblers to look ahead to the Royals' future. As expected, Paddy Power has a whole range of things you can bet on right now. For example, when will William and Kate have their first child? (Odds are 10/1 that it's this year. Time is running out, after all.)
Or who will be the next British monarch? Prince Charles is at 8/11, William at even, Harry at 8/1 and 'Any Other' at 50/1.
We've all heard the story of how Prince William became smitten with Kate Middleton when she paraded down a catwalk in a see-through dress in March 2002 while both were students at the University of St. Andrews.
Apparently, according to new tales by a former classmate, the spark had already been ignited months before when William paid £200 ($315) to win Kate in a 'slave auction' at school.
Laura Warshauer, who has written a song about the love story of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, tells the Daily Mail that William and Kate hit it off almost immediately in their first year at university.
In November of that freshman year, she says, there was a Harry Potter-themed party.
"There was a charity auction where you could bid for the person for the day and Will paid £200 for Kate," Warshauer told the paper. "She was dressed in school uniform and was stood on these stone steps with us all below.
"No one else was winning Kate that night. They already had that connection."
Warshauer, who now lives in Los Angeles, penned a song called 'To Will and Kate, Meet Me at Exit 109.'
Warshauer tells another story of Prince William at a party being hounded by a persistent girl who he was trying to politely turn away.
"Suddenly, Kate just walked up to Will in the most natural way and put her arms around him. It gave Will the opportunity to turn to the other girl and say, 'I’m sorry, I have a girlfriend,' while gesturing towards Kate.
"Will then turned to Kate and mouthed in an exaggerated way, 'Thank you.' She was the only girl in the room who could have pulled that off so effortlessly."
The slave auction story about the budding romance is nice, of course, but the story of the see-through dress will probably have much more staying power in the lore of this couple.
Besides, there's an anonymous bidder who paid more than $120,000 at an auction for the Charlotte Todd-designed dress a few months ago. The price of royal history does not come cheap.
Had enough of Pippa? How about that dress she wore at the royal wedding? No? Well, even if you've seen it all a thousand times, chances are you haven't seen her like this:
This particular video is already into viral-dom with more than 600,000 views. Between YouTube videos and Facebook, with its various Pippa sites like 'Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society,' the 27-year-old sister of the future Queen is now experiencing the kind of media feeding frenzy that Kate endured in the months before her wedding to Prince William.
Since uncovering a few old skeletons in the closet with some party and bikini pix, the interest has been heightened, no matter how many complaints the Middleton family files with the UK's Press Complaints Commission.
Best advice might be to go with flow. Eventually calmness will fall over her day.
Until then, like this video, she can expect her life to be all shook up.
The man behind the Pippa Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society
Twenty-one-year-old Management and Strategy student Mike Bandar should really be awarded an 'A' in his studies this year.
"I was watching the royal wedding with some friends," Bandar, a student at Aston University in Birmingham, England, wrote in an email to the Star. "As soon as Pippa stepped out at Westminster Abbey we all thought and said the same thing, 'She is stunning. We joked about how every man around the world watching the wedding would be thinking the exact thing which obviously turned out to be true."
The friends quickly set up the Facebook page while watching the wedding, but decided to take it down an hour later, thinking the moment had passed -- until they saw 100 people had liked it already.
"I then put up a few pictures, wrote a description and posted it on a few pages and it went mental from there! Thousands after thousands of likes, every time we refreshed there was hundred more fans," wrote Bandar.
Ranging from $18-25, so far more than 100 of the T-shirts have been sold and shipped around the world through the site, wrote Bandar, with the most popular being the standard "Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society" look. "I'd like to be in the Middleton of that" is also selling well, but only in men's sizes.
Although the website does include a section with some other celebrity behinds, Bandar says he does not have any plans to develop additional celebrity ass-praising pages.
So what has the reaction been to the site and Facebook page?
"The majority of feedback has been very positive. 99% of people take it as its intended, a bit of harmless fun and banter," wrote Bandar. "Some people think it is disrespectful which I can understand as I believe it is based on some of the more 'colourful' comments we have on the page."
Set to graduate this year, Bandar plans to continue to run a small portfolio of business he's set up over the last six years "which you will be pleased to know aren't Pippa, or Ass related," Bandar wrote.
Here's a couple of interesting photo comparisons, a la Disney, making the web rounds via Facebook. The Ugly Stepsisters have changed gown colours to match Beatrice and Eugenie, but have kept their better-looking hats.
The bidding for Princess Beatrice’s ugly hat has climbed to $9,300 during its first full day on eBay.
The first of what is now nine bidders (as of 2:15 p.m. ET) was British entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne, who started things off with 5,000 pounds ($7,800). Proceeds from the auction, which closes May 22, go to UNICEF and Children in Crisis.
"Whatever anyone thinks of the hat it's fantastic that Princess Beatrice is doing this for Unicef and Children in Crisis. Good for her,” Bannatyne said.
Beatrice, the daughter of Prince Andrew, has seem the Philip Treacy hat go through much mocking through sites like Facebook, but seems to be taking all the ribbing in stride. “I hope whoever wins the auction has as much fun with the hat as I have,” she told Grazia magazine.
Starring role for royal couple
Kate and William will be getting a Hollywood-style welcome when they visit Los Angeles after their Canadian tour in July.
The Telegraph reports that one of their stops will be a party at the home of Steve Tisch (right), the executive producer of films done by director Guy Ritchie, one of the privileged guests at the royal wedding.
"It would be William and Catherine's introduction to Hollywood, and while it will be a relatively small event, around 30 couples, there will be some big names in the room," a Hollywood source told the Telegraph.
Aside from his movie company, which has produced hits like Forrest Gump and Ritchie’s Snatch, Tisch is co-owner of the NFL’s New York Giants.
Prince William met Ricthie through a mutual real estate friend who sold Ritchie a home in Britain.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will have a busy couple of days in L.A. following 10 days whizzing across Canada (June 30-July 8). They are expected to meet former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (likely not for martial advice), check in with their friends David and Victoria Beckham, take in the sights of Yosemite National Park and check in with a charity or two.
No official details of either excursion have been released yet.
The lives of royalty are a constant source of fascination, whether putting on a lavish wedding, fending off scandal or simply doing their jobs. Follow us as we follow the royal news trail.
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