One of the great things about the Netflix Beckham docuseries is that it introduced David Beckham’s soccer/football career to a new audience. Before I watched the series, I honestly didn’t “get” why Beckham had such a major career. Yes, he never won the World Cup, but he captained Team England for six years and made a historic number of appearances playing for his country. His achievements at Manchester were crazy, and he won La Liga at Real Madrid. All told, he won 19 major titles/trophies. Truly, a historic career, and off the pitch, he is still a global ambassador for football and one of the richest athletes of all time. Which is probably why the Windsors have always punished him and refused to “give” him a knighthood – he’s too famous, too rich, too successful. Those sadists have to withhold something from him. Well, according to the Daily Mail, the Windsors were withholding the knighthood because of Beckham’s closeness to Prince Harry. And now David has “severed ties” with Harry, so King Charles has granted David an audience.

David Beckham has accepted an invitation from the King to attend a dinner after severing ties with Prince Harry. The former England star is dining with Charles to talk about the possibility of him becoming an ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation, a charity founded by the King in order to help provide skills to young people.

Mr Beckham has previously held a similar role representing Invictus Games, the multi-sport competition for sick and injured servicemen and women founded by Prince Harry in 2014. But the ex-footballer has since distanced himself from the Duke of Sussex after he and wife Meghan relocated to the US and stepped back as senior royals in 2020.

Sources close to Mr Beckham say that he is hoping for a honour such as a knighthood, the Sun reported. He was awarded an OBE back in June 2003 for services to football. More recently in 2017, his wife Victoria received the same honour for her contribution to fashion.

The 48-year-old’s chances of being knighted were previously blighted after he was one of 1,000 people caught up in the scandal involving Ingenious films, including former teammate Wayne Rooney, who all lost their case to overturn a £700million bill of avoided tax in 2017.

It’s possible that Mr Beckham will meet King Charles at the Foundation’s base, Dumfries House, in east Ayrshire, Scotland. A source suggested that the meeting would be an opportunity for the King to ‘suss out’ Mr Beckham and find out in what areas they could work together.

[From The Daily Mail]

Where is the evidence that Becks has severed ties with Harry? In September, Harry turned up at the Inter Miami game in LA, reportedly because Harry always wanted to see Leo Messi play (Messi plays for Miami). While there were no photos of Harry and David together, it would be hard to believe that Harry would have made a point of going to the game without speaking to David. That being said, I’ve gotten the feeling for months now that Prince William has been throwing tantrums about and to David Beckham and that William is the one who made this into a “you can’t be friends with Harry” situation. It’s just so stupid and small.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

I love Taylor Swift and her team’s brief little updates to People Magazine. Team Swift has been doing it for a while and I appreciate that they’re pretty matter-of-fact about it. We saw it a lot in the six-week “romance” with Matt Healy too – Team Swift tried hard to stay on top of the narrative via casual briefings to People, and then when Swift and Healy broke up, the briefings were “it was never that serious anyway, you guys overreacted!” I remember! Anyway, Team Swift wants us to know that Taylor and Travis Kelce are getting very serious about each other.

It seems like romance is “burning red” between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. A source tells PEOPLE that things are getting “more serious” between the “Cruel Summer” singer, 33, and the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, 34.

“It’s quickly turning more serious. They share a strong work ethic and have a huge appreciation for life and their careers, strong family bond and values,” says the source.

Kelce is also “sweet, goofy and just a blast to be around,” adds the source.

[From People]

Let’s admit it – Travis is perfect for Taylor. He IS goofy and kind and that man is genuinely trying to woo her and show her that he’s serious and locked in. That’s also the reason why I keep wondering if Taylor will find a way to sabotage herself or the relationship. It’s simply too perfect and it’s clear that Travis is zero-drama and very into her. It’s like Tom Hiddleston all over again. Meanwhile, Travis’s dad Ed gave yet another interview, and this time he praised Taylor for understanding that Travis needs his rest.

“I think she’s very genuine,” he told Entertainment Tonight Wednesday, calling Swift “so grounded.” He also thinks their relationship is “just great.”

“They’re two wonderful people and they are enjoying each other’s company and supporting each other,” he said, noting that “this is a rough time for either one of them to have a relationship. She’s in the middle of this ginormous tour, he’s knee-deep [in the NFL season]. At least he takes his just as serious as she takes hers as far as commitment to their craft.”

And, importantly, that means a commitment to letting Travis take a nap. “I think she realizes how committed Travis is to sleep, 10 hours a day, when your body is going through this kind of thing,” Ed Kelce said. “So I think they’re both very supportive.”

[From Vanity Fair]

The sleep thing is something I’ve noticed a lot recently, where athletes casually talk about sleeping for nine, ten, eleven, maybe even twelve hours a day. Tennis players have started talking about it more (which is how I trendspotted it!) and there’s one 20-year-old tennis player who honestly tries to get up to 13 hours of sleep a day because he thinks sleep is the best restorative method for his body. Maybe athletes have always been like that, but it does feel like it’s some kind of trend and now elite athletes are like “yeah, part of my recovery is a mandatory three-hour nap every day.” Honestly, goals. I wonder if Travis and Taylor take naps together. OMG, imagine Travis taking catnaps WITH Taylor’s cats Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith.

Taylor didn’t attend last night’s Chiefs game in Denver… and the Chiefs lost. After the game, Denver played Swift’s “Shake It Off” while Broncos fans celebrated. Ouch.

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The Broncos are playing Taylor Swift after beating the Chiefs!pic.twitter.com/Csr2qUGgjz

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) October 29, 2023

Photos courtesy of Instagram and Backgrid.

One of the last times “royal expert/columnist” Richard Kay appeared on the Mail’s Palace Confidential show, he folded like a cheap suit when asked about Prince William’s sad “I wanna be a global statesman” trip to New York. After hitting all of Kensington Palace’s talking points, Kay was asked if he thinks William is just shy. Kay was like, no actually he’s awkward, stilted, careful and not a natural on his feet. It was hilarious. Well, Kay was allowed back on Palace Confidential, this time armed with Buckingham Palace’s talking points about King Charles ahead of Chuck’s 75th birthday. Kay closed his eyes and thought of England:

King Charles has gone from a ‘confused young man’ to the ‘nation’s grandfather’ thanks to his love and support from wife Camilla, a royal expert has claimed. Speaking in a special episode of Palace Confidential to celebrate the monarch’s 75th birthday next month, Richard Kay shared how Charles has become ‘very comfortable in his skin.’

‘Prince of Wales as he then was, was a confused man. He was constantly competing with his wife [Princess Diana] and unsure of himself he was often being criticised in public. But the king he is today? He’s a man much more comfortable in his skin in large part because of his marriage to Queen Camilla.’

However, Charles’ first year as king has been dominated by the issues of ‘Harry, Meghan and Andrew’.

‘I think that’s going to go on. I think what’s interesting is what his response has been,’ Mr Kay added. ‘He has remained stoically silent, indeed almost impervious to many statements and remarks that have come out of California, and I think that will continue. He is becoming I think what he wants to be, which is the nation’s grandpa. It was always going to be such a difficult act to follow after the queen.’.

Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English added that senior member’s of royal staff have told he the King would be the ‘first to admit’ that he ‘made mistakes in his personal life’ in the past. She added: ‘But should he be expected to pay for those mistakes for the rest of time on earth? Time is a healer and people have come to accept the man that he is. He’s in a much happier place personally and that seeps into his professional life.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Charles was “a confused man. He was constantly competing with his wife [Princess Diana] and unsure of himself.” This version of Charles was a man in his 30s and 40s. And it wasn’t confusion, he treated Diana like sh-t because he was jealous of her and he cheated on her constantly because he has zero morals. As for “the nation’s grandpa” – curious that this palace fluff is being mentioned in the same breath as the Sussexes. Because the nation’s grandpa left his son and grandson in mortal danger when he withdrew their security, and then he evicted his grandchildren from their British home.

While I’m usually loath to actually embed the Palace Confidential videos, I have chosen to do this week because the longer they go on in this episode, the more bonkers it gets about Camilla. From Richard Eden talking about how Camilla has never “had a job” before now, to Kay blowing smoke about how Camilla is “incredibly brave” and “she sacrificed a lot,” this whole thing is completely unhinged. What did Camilla “sacrifice” again? Her first marriage, willingly, by choice, when she decided to carry on with another woman’s husband for years? What was Camilla sacrificing when she briefed her favorite royal reporters about Diana being “crazy”? Kay underlines Camilla’s “value” to Charles by saying “what really commends her is she is no way any kind of threat to the king, she’s not going to steal his thunder, she’s not going to duck into the limelight…” Imagine being a whole-ass 75 year old king and the only woman you can stand to be around is the woman who is uncharismatic, lazy, dull enough to never overshadow you. How is any of this a compliment to Charles?

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

There have been moments where I’ve worried about Prince Harry’s patronage of African Parks. Would the Windsors find some way to “take away” Harry’s position with African Parks? I worried for no reason though. Harry has served as president of African Parks since December 2017, and one of his most recent visits on behalf of African Parks was leading an American congressional delegation through a multi-country tour of conservation efforts in 2022. Now Harry is getting a promotion with the NGO. From African Parks:

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex is a humanitarian, military veteran, mental wellness advocate, and environmentalist.

The Duke has dedicated his life’s work to advancing causes that he is passionate about, and that bring about permanent change for people and places. For over two decades, he has taken a deep personal interest in frontline conservation projects across Africa that work to protect the region’s natural resources and wildlife, for the benefit of local communities.

In July 2016, Prince Harry first joined African Parks in Malawi, where he served as part of the expert team that helped implement the first phase of the 500 Elephants project, one of the largest and most significant elephant translocations in conservation history.

Over the years, Prince Harry has remained closely involved in supporting the organisation’s mission of protecting Africa’s national parks for its people, and advancing wildlife conservation in Africa and around the world. Most recently, in August 2022, Prince Harry co-hosted a group of US officials, conservationists, and philanthropists as they toured protected wildlife and nature preserves under African Parks’ Management in Zambia, Mozambique and Rwanda.

In 2023, after serving six years as President, he was elevated to an officially appointed member of the Board of Directors, the governing body of the organisation.

[From African Parks]

Wow, this is so cool. One of the tabloid stories I believed from a few months ago was that Harry plans to do some kind of Netflix docuseries about conservation efforts in Africa, perhaps tied to his existing work with African Parks and other charities. I would love that, and I wonder if this Board of Directors position will make it even easier. Anyway, it’s nice to remember that Harry’s brother rage-shrieked “Africa is MINE!” and Harry just ignored that bald dumbass.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Lupita Nyong’o broke up with Selema Masekela at some point pretty recently, like it probably happened in early October from the sound of it. Lupita announced the split in a weird way – she went to a Janelle Monae concert with a group of friends (including Joshua Jackson) and then posted a somewhat cryptic message on her Instagram about her “season of heartbreak” because of a love “suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception.” Selema really fumbled the bag and broke Lupita’s heart in a huge way. Her mom came to stay with her and now Lupita has adopted a big orange tomcat to help her get over her heartbreak. I cannot get over this. Lupita posted this message with photos of her new cat, Yoto.

Introducing my new companion, Yoyo!

I have historically been afraid of cats, but when my life was altered instantly recently, a little voice whispered to me that it was time to embrace change and new possibilities. So, a dear friend (shoutout Palmer Hefferan!) held my hand through the process and took me to visit my first animal shelters. I fostered Yoyo from Best Friends Adoption Center, and 3 days into it, I knew I could not give him up.

What I have learned about him already:
• He LOVES company
• He LOVES his food
• He is extremely careful and rarely drops things
• He is very picky about his wand toys
• He only drinks running water
• The bugs in the house don’t stand a chance
• He can’t be trusted around supplements!

I never understood people whose phones were full of photos and videos of their pets – now I am one of those people! It may look like I saved Yoyo, but really, Yoyo is saving me. #YOYOYYO #Caturday

And shoutout to the fantastic staff at @bestfriendsanimalsociety for being so warm, helpful and patient with me!

[From Lupita’s IG]

Speaking as someone who currently lives with a big orange tomcat, Yoyo is going to drive Lupita crazy and she’ll love every minute of it. Soon she’ll be a regular poster on the “One Orange Braincell” Reddit thread. Soon she’ll be awoken in the middle of the night by Yoyo deciding to sleep on her face. Soon she’ll be following Jorts’s orange exploits and wondering if all orange kitties are sweet-potato idiots. Anyway, I’m actually worried about Lupita – she’s really going through it and she looks like she’s lost weight too. I hope Yoyo looks after her.

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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Instagram.

As we’ve described for months, Carole and Michael Middleton have been in hiding since the collapse of Party Pieces in the late spring. Party Pieces had been badly mismanaged for years, although I genuinely believe that PP was never as financially successful as the Middletons claimed in their heyday. Following PP’s collapse into insolvency, vendor after vendor came out to speak about how Carole Middleton personally screwed them over, that she was on the phone with them, begging for extensions and promising to pay PP’s bills eventually. Credit was always extended because, hey, she’s the mother of the future queen. Carole was also the face of the company, and she even went to New Jersey to showcase PP’s “expansion” into the American market. Then PP was sold for pennies on the dollar to James Sinclair, and now Sinclair has been trying to push a false narrative about how PP’s collapse wasn’t Carole’s fault and there’s no reason why she should ever pay off the £2.6 million in debt. Sinclair previously gave an interview to the Telegraph a few weeks ago, and now he’s been trotted out to give another interview to the Sun. Some highlights:

Party Pieces’ collapse: With such royal links it was a shock in June this year when the company went into administration with £2.6m debts, leaving suppliers unpaid and the 30 plus workforce in fear of their futures. The company was bought for £180,000 by entrepreneur James Sinclair and continues trading. James stepped in to save the brand because he recognised its legacy. Under the terms of a deal known as a pre-pack administration however, James was not liable for the debts that had already been incurred.

New company boss, James, a former kids entertainer, tells Fabulous: “Carole has a huge emotional attachment to the business, even now. She spent three decades building it, literally from the kitchen table up and the whole family was involved. She built into a very successful business. It was a wrench for her to see it start to fail. It’s no secret that she’s part of a family that is busier than most and she wanted to retire. She sold half of the company to investors, a new team came in, and she stepped away from the business.”

James says that even though Party Pieces struggled during the pandemic, it was still in a healthy position when Carole stepped away but believes, however well intended, that the new management team overstretched and spent too much money.

“In November last year they asked Carole to come back in and she tried to steady the ship. She was like a lifeboat and a force of personality, but it was too late. In my view all she was guilty of was trying to retire. Everyone thinks she came out of it with a big fat cheque but quite the opposite is true, she came out of it with nothing. People expect her or her family to foot the bill, but they haven’t got the kind of the money people think they have.”

For his investment James got around seven lorry loads of stock, the brand, some of the staff, the website and the infrastructure.

James says that Carole desperately tried to avoid creditors being place out of pocket but in the end that wasn’t possible. “She wanted the business to be successful after I bought it because there were staff there who she cared about and she wanted to make sure their jobs were secure,” says James, who ensured staff were relocated from Berkshire to the new offices in Essex. When you start a business from scratch and run it for 30 years, you care, you want it to carry on. It’s very much like a baby. It’s part of who you are, part of your brain and your imagination, and you don’t want it just to end. None of the family did because they all worked there. It would have been a crying shame.”

[From The Sun]

Well well – “Everyone thinks she came out of it with a big fat cheque but quite the opposite is true, she came out of it with nothing. People expect her or her family to foot the bill, but they haven’t got the kind of the money people think they have.” A fate worse than death for the Middletons – Clever Carole isn’t so clever after all, and after “selling” half of PP, she didn’t make any money? And she’s broke as hell now, too broke to pay off the £2.6 million? The answer for a reasonable person would be “selling that giant manor house, paying off the debt and downsizing.” But Queen Carole wants all of the trappings, even if she never earned any of it. Where IS dodgy Uncle Gary anyway? And whatever happened to that pot farm adjacent to the Middletons’ property?

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Party Pieces’ IG.

I’ve made it no secret that I’m fascinated by the paranormal, like ghosts, psychic abilities, dreams, and anything that falls into that broad “Universe-y” category. Well, now we get to talk about another subject that I find fascinating: aAliens!

On a recent episode of Apple Fitness+’s Time to Walk podcast, Goldie Hawn shared that not only does she believe in aliens, she once had an encounter with grey-like beings. Goldie’s contactee experience happened in the mid-1960s, which was a decade full of reports of the UFO phenomena. The Hills were (allegedly) infamously abducted in 1961 and among the first to share their story publicly, which led to tons of reports of UFO and alien activity. According to Goldie, she was asleep in a friend’s car when she was awoken by aliens. During this encounter, they pointed at her and touched her face.

While sleeping in a friend’s car in the California desert after a night of dancing, Hawn, who was then 20, said she was greeted by a “high-pitched sound.” At the time, Hawn recalled there were “a lot” of UFO sightings and stories.

“I looked out the window, and I saw these two or three triangular-shaped heads,” shared Hawn, who described the creatures as being “silver in color” and having a “slash for a mouth” as well as small noses and no ears.

“They were pointing at me, pointing at me in the car as if they were discussing me like I was a subject. And they were droning,” Hawn elaborated, noting that she “could not move. I was paralyzed … I didn’t know if it was real or not real.”

Unable to determine if the experience was real, Hawn soon broke from her trance.

“I burst out of it. It was like bursting out of a forcefield. And of course, I go back to all the kids and stuff, and I went, ‘Oh, my God. I think I made contact with outer space.’”

Years later, she recounted her experience to an astrophysicist at the University of Champaign, Ill., sharing that it unlocked her memories of how “they touched my face. They touched my face, and it felt like the finger of God. It was the most benevolent, loving feeling. This was powerful. It was filled with light.”

Hawn isn’t the only person in her household who claims to have an alien connection. Her longtime partner, Kurt Russell, revealed in 2017 to the BBC that he was the pilot who called in a mysterious mass sighting of UFOs over Phoenix back in 1997. The incident came to be known as the Phoenix Lights UFO sighting.

[From Yahoo]

I was a huge fan of The X-Files when I was growing up, so I’m always interested in hearing or watching stories about UFOs (or UAPs as they’re now referred to) and aliens. I think the universe is too infinite and mysterious for human beings to truly be the only life form that exists anywhere. I don’t know if I believe all of the stories and theories out there, but I have always been particularly fascinated by the whole “ancient aliens” concept. CB watched the documentary Encounters, and it’s shot up to the top of my list, now.

I think Goldie’s story is interesting but also kinda scary! I also had no idea that Kurt Russell claims to be the pilot in the Phoenix Lights incident! It’s interesting that both he and Goldie – like many others who share their stories – didn’t remember their full experiences until something triggered the memory later on. I don’t know if I necessarily believe that those beings come here benevolently, so I wonder if Goldie was given that feeling in order to make her more cooperative or spread some kind of good alien PR. I also wonder if somewhere out there, there’s an extraterrestrial being whose claim to fame on their home planet is that they once touched Goldie Hawn’s forehead.

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Devastating news. Matthew Perry has passed away at the age of 54. TMZ broke the news on Saturday, and it appears that it was an accidental drowning in the jacuzzi at his LA-area home. TMZ also reports that Perry had played pickleball for two hours earlier in the day, and his assistant found him.

Perry is best known for his much-loved role as Chandler Bing on Friends, for which he was nominated for multiple Emmys and SAG Awards. Like most brilliant comedic actors, he was an underrated dramatic actor too, and one of my favorite Perry roles was his recurring guest appearance on The West Wing. He also had a decent film career, working with Salma Hayek on Fools Rush In and Bruce Willis in The Whole Nine Yards (another underrated performance). But he was best known for his television work, and of course he was best known for Friends. I’m sure his Friends castmates are devastated – he was reportedly very close to Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc.

Last year, Perry released his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir. It was about his life, his work and his struggles to get clean and sober. By all accounts, he was clean in recent years, and there’s no indication that his passing is related to anything like that.

I’ve been trying to think of my favorite Perry/Chandler Bing moment, the moment where he just seemed to be in full flight as a comedic actor, and I think it’s this one, where Phoebe is trying to “seduce” Chandler as a way to force him to admit that he’s dating Monica.

Photos credit: Ron Wolfson / Avalon, Andrew Eccles / Avalon, Backgrid and Cover Images

People have been talking about the length of movies these days. Director Alexander Payne recently said “there are too many damn long movies these days,” and he suggested that it was an editing issue. I would go further than that and say that streamers have encouraged self-indulgence from directors, plus the proliferation of “director’s cut” movies have made people believe that movies are supposed to be three-hours-plus. As I said in that Payne post, I rarely go to the movie theater at this point – I love streaming movies so I can orchestrate my own little intermissions if I need a snack break or a bathroom break. Well, you know how Killers of the Flower Moon is three hours and 26 minutes long? Well, various movie theaters have started fashioning their own intermissions so that the audience can stretch their legs and get a snack for ten minutes, then come back and watch the rest of the movie. Apple and Paramount are pissed!!

Martin Scorsese did not include an intermission in his 206-minute epic, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” But that hasn’t stopped a handful of movie theaters around the world from inserting one themselves, with intervals ranging from between six minutes and 15 minutes.

As of Friday morning, two European cinema chains and one independent theater in Amsterdam sold tickets to screenings of “Killers of the Flower Moon” with a built-in break. A spokesperson for UCI Cinemas, an exhibition chain with venues in Germany, Italy, Portugal and Brazil, confirmed that all of its nearly 80 theaters — with the exception of Imax screens in Porta di Roma, Orio, and Campi Bisenzio — had included a “six-minute interval towards the middle of the film.” The Vue, a U.K.-based theater chain, and an Amsterdam cinema called The Movies Haarlemmerdijk also were offering showings with a break, according to their websites.

Domestically, The Lyric, a theater in Fort Collins, Colo., showed the historical drama with an intermission until Oct. 26. However, they did away with the intermission after getting in trouble with Paramount, the film’s distributor, and Apple Original Films, its producer. The companies have been contacting theaters that have violated their contract by splitting up the film and telling them to show “Killers of the Flower Moon” as intended, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.

To be clear, only a smattering of venues out of the roughly 10,000 globally that are screening “Killers of the Flower Moon” have included an intermission, but it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Thelma Schoonmaker, the editor of the film and longtime collaborator with Scorsese, told The Standard, “I understand that somebody’s running it with an intermission which is not right. That’s a violation so I have to find out about it.”

While Scorsese has not directly addressed the intermission (or lack thereof), he defended the long runtime of “Killers of the Flower Moon” in an interview with the Hindustan Times, saying, “People say it’s three hours, but come on, you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours.”

[From Variety]

You cannot compare “someone sitting at home and watching five hours of TV” with being stuck in a movie theater for three and a half hours! Longer than that, because people arrive early to find their seats, watch the previews (which are getting longer and longer) and watch all of those f–king commercials BEFORE the previews. Again, when people “binge-watch” something at home, they are actually creating intermissions for themselves to get food and use the bathroom. That’s one of the best things about watching sh-t in the comfort of your home – you can watch something at your own pace, with fried chicken. I will defend Scorsese about almost everything, but this is where I draw the line. Let people have their intermissions, for the love of God. Paramount and Apple need to cut this sh-t out.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, posters & promotional image courtesy of Paramount/Apple.

King Charles and his consort will arrive in Kenya on Tuesday, Halloween. Boo! It’s a sausage-fingered racist coming to haunt you. There’s been a distinct lack of buzz about this Kenya trip, probably because no one wants to point out that this is the king’s first trip to a Commonwealth country as monarch AND because Charles is extremely nervous about the reception he and Camilla will get in the country. I said before that I imagine that C&C will try to keep things as lowkey as possible, but the palace has already indicated that it is extremely unlikely that Charles will go so far as “apologizing” for Britain’s many sins in Kenya. Interestingly enough, Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast had a long-read piece about how Kenyans will react to the king’s visit, given the extensive and well-documented history of British oppression in Kenyan, including 90,000 Kenyans murdered, tortured or maimed in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonizers. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

They want an apology: Influential Kenyan citizens and expatriates have told The Daily Beast they want King Charles to use his forthcoming visit to the country to make a full and frank apology for crimes perpetrated by British overlords as they crushed the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya between 1952 and 1960, one of the bloodiest episodes in colonial history. So far, the Palace has refused to be drawn in detail on the question of how the king will deal with the divisive and toxic legacy of British colonialism in Kenya, with advisers only saying that he would acknowledge “painful aspects” of the countries’ “shared history.”

How people really feel: Take, for example, Dominic Kirui, a Kenyan athlete and double Olympian turned writer. In a telephone interview, he told The Daily Beast: “A royal visit in itself is not something that many Kenyans would have wanted or needed, because it awakens thoughts and feelings about the colonial past that many people have buried and never want exhumed.” Kirui comes from a region in the Rif Valley where, he says, “the scars of colonialism can still be felt and seen. The people in Kericho were driven out of their homes and their ancestral lands and forcibly resettled in Nyanza, on lands that were infested with the tsetse fly, which it was hoped would kill them. A royal visit only serves to remind people about the injustices that were committed and the pain they suffered, so I cannot believe it is something Kenyans would be eager to see or witness.”

Britain’s colonialist past is still felt every day in Kenya: Kirui points out that stories of oppression are common “all over Kenya” especially where huge tea farms comprising thousands of acres were carved out. “The people whose land was stolen… still live among the farms,” Kirui said, adding, “I see the visit by the royals as a way of the colonists saying to Kenyans, ‘We are still around. You are not as sovereign as you think you are.’” Kirui dismissed the generalized expressions of contrition made by Charles’ office saying that what was needed was “reparations to ensure people are compensated.”

Another Kenyan voice: James Mugo, a Kenyan-born lawyer who has lived in the U.K. for 26 years, has a very personal sense of outrage about what the British did in Kenya. In the mid-1950s, his grandfather, who was in his late seventies, was shot and killed at point-blank range by British soldiers as he emerged from a forest where he had been gathering honey from beehives he kept there. He was far too old to be mistaken for a Mau Mau fighter. Mugo told The Daily Beast: “Unless King Charles delivers anything less than an outright apology for the crimes committed by the colonists, he will not be welcome in Kenya. There are millions of people who are still languishing in poverty right now as a result of the British’s actions. They lost their land and were put in concentration camps and villages and exploited for cheap labor. I don’t see why Kenyans cannot be compensated.” Speaking about his grandfather’s murder by British troops, he said: “He was not fighting. He was 70 years old and he was shot by British soldiers collecting honey. So I personally find it very offensive that King Charles can go there and not apologize for what happened. Very offensive. It is adding insult to injury.”

[From The Daily Beast]

There are other Kenyans quoted, some of whom say that they welcome the royal visit and they want to see Kenya make some deals with British businesses. One suggested that China and Russia have been looking to invest in Kenya, which probably provides the best explanation for why Charles is visiting Kenya more than anything else. But yeah – it’s quite unlikely that Charles will issue a thorough apology and it’s quite likely that he will stammer through some half-assed speech where he basically says “mistakes were made, let’s move on and make a deal.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.