In June, Sarah Ferguson was diagnosed with breast cancer, and a single mastectomy was performed. The news was only announced after the surgery, and Fergie is apparently recovering at Royal Lodge, where she has her own suite of rooms in the Royal Windsor estate her ex-husband leases. I’ve been curious why we haven’t heard any PR puff pieces about how Prince Andrew is worried sick and how he’s looking after his ex-wife. I guess they can’t even say that because it’s clear that Andrew isn’t doing anything – it’s fallen on Princess Eugenie to help her mom. Meanwhile, King Charles has apparently “shelved” the talk of evicting the Yorks from Royal Lodge.

Brave Sarah Ferguson has told friends she feels “very lucky to be alive” after a gruelling eight-hour breast cancer operation, we can reveal today. The Duchess of York, 63, is said to be in good spirits and recovering well after spending four days in intensive care in hospital following her exhausting ordeal. It is believed mum-of-two Fergie needed round-the-clock monitoring after the anaesthetic took its toll during what friends confirmed was “successful” surgery. She has returned home following the procedure at King Edward VII’s Hospital in Marylebone, central London, in which a breast was removed and reconstructed.

Friends say daughter Eugenie, 33, has “all but moved in” to Royal Lodge in Windsor, Berks, to look after her, while older child Beatrice, 34, has been “constantly on the phone”. Fergie is also being supported by former husband Prince Andrew, 63.

A palace insider said that plans for the family to move into nearby Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s former home, have been “quietly shelved” for now. King Charles, meanwhile, has written to his former sister-in-law to offer his “sincere wishes for a speedy recovery”.

Surgeon Christine Choy carried out the single mastectomy while colleague Stuart James reconstructed the breast using fat from Fergie’s stomach. A friend of the duchess said: “The surgery took getting on for eight hours and was more involved than people think. Today, the message she wants to get out is that she’s very grateful and she feels very lucky to be alive. She wants to thank the two incredible surgeons Christine Choy and Stuart James who saved her life and all the medical team who worked tirelessly to help her.”

A source said Fergie, who was discharged from hospital last Sunday after six days of medical care, was lucky as her cancer was caught early. They added: “Most people usually associate breast cancer with a lump but that’s not always the case. A lump can be detected by the patient, but this was a ‘shadow’, which can go undetected as it’s a wider spread of cancerous cells. In Sarah’s case, a biopsy was taken from the shadowy area of tissue and a few days later the results came back to confirm the diagnosis — breast cancer.”

[From The Sun]

Eugenie is only one month postpartum with her second child, I really hope all of this hasn’t fallen on her. Fergie better be getting real help from nurses and healthcare professionals as she recovers. Again, note that no one can even say if Andrew is helping out at all! Anyway, I feel for Fergie and her daughters. I genuinely hope Fergie makes a full recovery. And I also hope that Fergie moves out of Royal Lodge when she feels better. She’s got that other home in London now.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

I have only seen Allison Williams in two things: Peter Pan Live! from NBC and Get Out. With Peter Pan I thought she was in the range of meh to ok, but I knew that I would always be biased because I grew up adoring the 1950s version with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard. In Get Out I thought she was well cast and did a great job, but I also never felt like she was the only actress who could have played that role. I think it’s been smart of Allison to continue with the horror genre, even if she doesn’t want to do them forever. Obviously the glaring hole missing in my viewership of her resume is Girls, and for that I blame Lena Dunham. When Girls came out I had an instinctual “no thank you” response to Ms. Dunham–I admit freely that there was no fair appraisal, just my spidey senses–so to be fair I forfeited 139 minutes of my life to watching Tiny Furniture. I will never get that time back. Between that experience and, you know, everything Lena Dunham has said and done since, I feel comfortable with my original assessment. So it’s with mixed feelings that I take in Allison’s comments on misogyny in Hollywood and how Lena helped her navigate it, that Allison shared recently at the Nantucket Film Festival:

Allison Williams is reflecting on being referred to as “on-set eye candy” during one of her first jobs in Hollywood.

The Girls alum, 35, appeared on the “Women Behind the Words” panel at the Nantucket Film Festival last weekend and recalled some of the comments she received during one of her earliest gigs in Hollywood. Appearing alongside filmmaker Nicole Holofcener and actress Michaela Watkins, Williams remembered working as a stand-in on the Martin Scorcese-directed pilot of the HBO crime drama Boardwalk Empire, which aired in 2010.

“There’s like 10 stories fighting their way from my brain to my mother that I’m trying to keep out of my mouth,” The Perfection actress told the crowd, as IndieWire reported. “I guess one of them, just very quickly… people just underestimate your humanity often as a young woman up and coming in our business. I was a stand-in for the pilot of Boardwalk Empire, which was the coolest experience ever, an amazing pilot. It was shot on film. It was incredible. But I was at craft services and a member of the crew came up and said, ‘So what do you do here? You’re the on-set eye candy?’”

Williams went on to say that the exchange was just another example of misogyny she has experienced throughout her career.

“An actor I later worked with who watched me eat a pastry and said, ‘Don’t you want to be successful?’ You know, those kinds of comments come up inevitably.”

Williams went on to credit her Girls creator and co-star Lena Dunham for serving as a voice of reason in the wake of intense criticism.

“For everything like that, there’s like Lena who just so gently, and at basically my same age, would usher me through this very unusual experience and was such an unbelievably talented writer and director, and was able to just get me to breathe and slow down and not do anything, and in doing that, just trust the material and trust that the talent is there,” she recalled.

[From Yahoo]

“Williams went on to credit her Girls creator and co-star Lena Dunham for serving as a voice of reason in the wake of intense criticism.” I’m sorry but that makes me laugh so hard. Of course Lena would make you feel better about criticism, she very easily forgave herself for being racist! Oy gevolt. Moving past Lena’s invocation here, the anecdotes on being called the on-set eye candy and what the actor said to Allison for eating a pastry–both of those are heinous, no woman should have to deal with that crap at work (or anywhere, really). Not to mention the fact that Allison Williams is skinny! Still, it’s hard for me to lose track of the fact that she had a lot of good fortune when she got started. She addresses it herself later in the article, saying “I’ve been disproportionately lucky and privileged, and I intend to spend the rest of my life working off that credit by giving back and paying it forward.” She’s saying everything she should be saying, so why am I rolling my eyes? This is what I find tough with the nepo-babies. They should be judged by their work, not their connections, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to forget the leg up they have. Anyway, I still think Kaiser nailed it when she called Allison Williams “millennial Goop.”

photos credit: Backgrid, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, B4859/Avalon

Valentine Low is best known to royal-gossips as the Times of London royal reporter who got the big exclusive on Kensington Palace’s attempts to frame the Duchess of Sussex as a “bully” in 2021, just days before the Sussexes’ Oprah interview aired. It was an obvious scheme to smear Meghan because KP was terrified that she would speak about just how horribly she was treated and how the Windsors are full of racists. Low used those connections – KP staffers mostly, Simon Case and Jason Knauf – to position himself as a royal biographer in tune with the royal courtiers. Thus, Low released his book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, last October. It made minimal impact, as did many of the royal books released in a rush last fall, ahead of the publication of Prince Harry’s Spare.

Well, now Courtiers is coming out in paperback, and Low has updated it with sections about what happened after QEII passed away, and how “race and racism” is one of the biggest issues facing King Charles’s reign. The new sections were excerpted in the Times, and there’s a lot of dumb drama about how Charles started firing people basically as soon as he became king, how Charles and Camilla changed the locks on Angela Kelly within days (we already knew that) and how Charles’s private secretary Clive Alderton (Prince Harry referred to him as the Wasp in Spare) is in over his head and already unpopular with the old-guard at Buckingham Palace. In the section where Low describes the Susan Hussey debacle last November, he goes into the royal issues around race and, of course, the Duchess of Sussex.

The Susan Hussey debacle revealed just how much of a problem the issue of race is for the palace. The underlying issue was not going to go away, however: the royal family has a problem with race, and has done so ever since Meghan made clear how unhappy she had been during her time as a working royal.

The “bullying investigation”: Later, it emerged that the palace had appointed an outside firm of solicitors to conduct an inquiry. Just over a year later, the palace said it would not be releasing the outcome of the inquiry, or even revealing what lessons had been learnt, on the grounds of confidentiality. But most people suspected that the real reason they were burying the report was to try to keep the peace with Harry and Meghan.

The Oprah interview: The second, bigger challenge faced by the palace in March 2021 was Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. For most people, their most damaging accusation concerned what one courtier awkwardly called “the r-word”. That had come up because of remarks that a member of the royal family supposedly made about the colour of Harry and Meghan’s future baby’s skin. A palace team had watched the interview overnight — it was screened in the US on the evening of Sunday, March 7, and was not due to be shown in the UK until the next day — and senior officials had spent the morning locked in conference calls as they debated how to respond. A draft statement was ready by 2pm on Monday. Much to the frustration of the media, however, the palace remained silent. One insider said, “One of the reasons was that the late Queen was adamant that she was going to watch the programme first.” And she was going to watch it with the rest of the population, on ITV on Monday evening.

The palace response: The next day, the serious negotiations began over the official response. William and Kate – the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they were then — sat together on a sofa as they discussed with their officials how to deal with the Sussexes’ incendiary allegations. The draft statement they had at that point did not yet include the phrase that was to become famous, that “some recollections may vary”. The insider recalled, “It had a much milder version. The debate was, do you rise entirely above it and offer the olive branch of [Harry and Meghan being] ‘much loved members of the family’? Or is there some moment when you have to intervene and offer a view?”

Kate & William wanted a tough statement: While they were as concerned as anyone about not getting into a tit-for-tat with Harry and Meghan, William and Kate were clear which side of the debate they were on. “They wanted it toughened up a bit,” said the insider. “They were both of one mind that we needed something that said that the institution did not accept a lot of what had been said. He said, ‘It is really important that you guys come up with the right way of making sure that we are saying that this does not stand.’ She was certainly right behind him on it.”

Kate gets credit for “recollections may vary”: While some have attributed “recollections may vary” to Alderton, more than one source has said that the author was in fact Jean-Christophe Gray, William’s new private secretary, who had been in post for less than three weeks. At least two senior officials in other households were against its inclusion, because they feared that it would rile Harry and Meghan. But once the phrase had been added to the draft, it was — according to another source — the Duchess of Cambridge who pressed home the argument that it should remain. “It was Kate who clearly made the point, ‘History will judge this statement and unless this phrase or a phrase like it is included, everything that they have said will be taken as true.’ ”

Steely Keen: This was, said the source, yet another example of how Kate is often far steelier than she appears. “She does not get as much credit as she should, because she is so subtle about it. She is playing the long game. She has always got her eye on, ‘This is my life and my historic path and I am going to be the Queen one day.’ ” The toughened-up draft went to Buckingham Palace for approval, and came back a couple of hours later. The Queen had said yes.

Palace inertia: One critic who has seen the system from the inside argues that the palace has lost its way. It is partly, they say, down to a management culture that does not encourage risk-taking. “You’ve got a complete inertia in my view, a complete inability to make decisions, to lead, to think about things strategically. And that is why you end up in this mess that they’re in with the Sussexes, [the] Duke of York and the staff issues. Because they’re so worried about their own positions. They kind of lose track of what being a leader is.”

Meghan “never really wanted to be accepted”: Courtiers at their worst can fan the flames of family dissent, over-energetically pursuing their principal’s agenda at the cost of the wider interests of the institution. They can also be the voice of conservatism, which, depending on circumstances, can be a good thing or a bad thing. If they are protecting the monarchy from the foolishness of a member of the royal family who thinks they know best, that can only be for the good. But if they stand in the path of progress, the verdict of history will not be kind to them. Some of those who worked with Meghan argue that she never really wanted to be accepted by the royal family. That might be true. But if the institution had tried harder, and if she had been more willing to adapt herself to palace life, she could have been one of the royal family’s greatest assets.

[From The Times]

It’s difficult to take any of this seriously given how many times Low unquestioningly parrots the palace’s talking points. As in, it’s not our fault that we were unspeakably racist to Meghan, she never really wanted to fit into the royal family! GMAFB. The thing about the inquiry into the bullying accusations is also the palace’s talking point – if the accusations had ever been credible, if there was ever evidence that Meghan mistreated anyone, Knauf and Case would have leaked that sh-t years ago. It was always a trumped-up scheme to abuse and smear a Black woman who was speaking about how badly she had been treated. They could never release the findings of the inquiry because the findings made William and Kate look like what they are: racist imbeciles who can’t run an effective office.

As for Kate suddenly getting the credit/blame for “recollections may vary”… while I doubt Kate came up with it or even argued strongly for it, it’s fascinating that Kate is being pushed as the architect of that gaslighting bullsh-t. It’s also notable because this was 2021, about a year and a half before QEII passed away. Just how many statements were made with QEII’s “authorization” which she had nothing to do with?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Instar, Backgrid, CBS/Harpo.

I’ll never forget the week in which Prince William barked orders at his staff and demanded that they blanket the media with quotes about how he is the savior of homeless people. It was, in fact, just last week when the Kensington Palace clownshow went way overboard with their embiggening campaign for William, all because he’s donating £3 million of Royal Foundation money to create some kind of additional bureaucracy around housing people. The campaign, Homewards, might have been well-received if not for the wall-to-wall self-aggrandizement from William as he desperately tried to claim his mother’s memory and her popularity. Speaking of, KP went to Richard Kay at the Daily Mail, and Kay dutifully shat out this mess: “’If I become KING, I will let the homeless live in our PALACES’: William’s words to Diana at just 13 reveal why his crusade to end rough sleeping is inspired by his mother’s compassion.” Y’all. Some highlights!

William at 13: ‘If I become King,’ he told the Princess, using the deliberately cautious language of Royal Family members, ‘I will let the homeless live in our palaces.’ Diana was certainly struck by such an imaginative — if improbable — suggestion to solving a social crisis that is now many times more urgent than it was then. It was, she said, just the kind of unorthodox idea she might have come up with.

William isn’t “hot-headed” like Harry: For years, his somewhat guarded and watchful approach to his royal role has been contrasted with Harry’s outspoken, hot-headed, cavalier style. Insiders have long considered that while he physically resembled his mother, William was in temperament more a Windsor: wary like his late grandmother and stubborn like Charles. Yet, increasingly, it seems Diana’s influence on him outweighs that of his father. Indeed, as he gets older and moves closer to the throne, his outlook appears more than ever to resemble the mother he lost.

The first over ownership of Diana’s legacy: And yet, in the years after Diana’s death, it seemed at times as though her part in the Princes’ lives was being airbrushed from royal history. We now know that was not the case. As the 20th anniversary of the Princess’s death approached, both William and Harry spoke movingly of memories of their mother and the debt they owed her. Sadly, as the relationship between the brothers deteriorated, that affection for Diana turned into a tussle over her legacy. Who truly was Diana’s heir? The impulsive Harry, or the dutiful William?

Diana’s sons: Harry has chosen a grievance narrative, using it to cloak himself as his mother’s true son. He has cast Meghan as a victim of an unscrupulous Palace just as Diana was. In his book and in interviews he has often invoked her name. William, by contrast, has staked his claim by choosing his official priorities. Aged 23, he took on his mother’s patronage of Centrepoint, the homeless charity, and later succeeded her as president of the Royal Marsden Hospital where she did so much to highlight the fight against cancer. These were two of his most significant causes.

William can’t walk & chew gum at the same time: The truth is that both brothers have manifestly inherited much from her. And what is particularly intriguing is that with so many new responsibilities as Prince of Wales, William is declaring that what is motivating him is his mother’s unfinished business. Courtiers question whether he will display quite the same level of attention to the huge portfolios he has taken on from his father — such as the Duchy of Cornwall — that he is currently showing in his plans to eradicate homelessness. Perhaps because it had been such a large part of his own life for so long, Charles obsessed over every detail of the 130,000-acre estate, with its vast holdings of agricultural land and residential and commercial property, including London’s Oval cricket ground.

Is William actually like Diana at all? So who does he most take after? According to one of Diana’s oldest friends, William is driven by his mother’s influence. ‘He has a strong sense of duty he has inherited from his father, but everything else — and what motivates him as a parent — comes from Diana,’ says the friend. ‘He has an instinctive touch, which she had. But there is one thing I think he would like that his mother enjoyed: she was adored by people because of all the things she did. William would like to be loved like that.’

Curious: The affection for Diana was unique: an outsider trapped in a miserable marriage who drew comfort from the less privileged lives of ordinary people she met. William’s hinterland is the polar opposite: a uniquely happy marriage to Kate and a partnership of equals where, unlike his parents, there is no competition for the spotlight.

[From The Daily Mail]

This sums it all up: “William would like to be loved like that.” It’s not that he particularly cares about homeless people or any particular cause. It’s not that William wants to emulate his mother’s work ethic and passions. It’s not that William even cares that much about reclaiming his mother’s legacy whatsoever. William just wants whatever Harry has, and William wants to be loved and admired as Diana was… without having to put in the work. William thinks he can simply mention Diana or invoke her name a few times and people will fall all over themselves because he’s “Diana’s son.” Meanwhile, we see Diana’s redheaded child living out Diana’s dream of getting away from that dreadful family and starting over. We see Diana’s iconoclastic nature mirrored in her youngest. Harry is actually too busy fighting all of his mother’s fights, whereas William just wanders around, telling people that he’s a lot like his mother.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were seen and photographed this weekend in Santa Barbara! I don’t know exactly what they were doing or where they were, TMZ just says that they left an office building in Santa Barbara. Given the casual way they’re dressed – Harry in jeans and worn polo, Meghan in shorts, shades & a hat – I would assume they were not doing business meetings, but probably just hanging out with friends or something. I really don’t know.

Meghan Markle & Prince Harry All Smiles Amid Uncertain Hollywood Future https://t.co/USH7qrRXxm

— TMZ (@TMZ) July 2, 2023

This appearance came amid a weekend full of Salt Island obsession. The Daily Mail ran several stories about Harry and Meghan’s business, and it’s all just so stalker-y. The Mail’s Alison Boshoff wrote an overwrought piece about how Meghan and Harry’s careers are diverging now, and Meghan is going to do more entertainment-industry stuff while Harry focuses more on charity and humanitarian work. It’s left unsaid that their next big Netflix project is something Harry put together: Heart of Invictus, which will come out this summer.

Boshoff also made a claim which has been widely picked up by British and American media, namely that the Sussexes “feel unlucky” because of global and family events. As in, the pandemic hit just as they were trying to build their new lives in America, and then Harry’s grandparents passed away in 2021 and 2022. Then there were market corrections when it came to Netflix and Spotify. Which… you know what, I’m actually glad they got their Netflix and Spotify deals when the money was good. Now Meghan has WME to help her get even better deals. Anyway, objectively speaking, they have been “unlucky” with how some things are timed. That being said, who f–king cares and why is the British media still writing these creepy, obsessive stalker articles?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle hold hands and share a laugh and joke together in Santa Barbara https://t.co/BThwYu6zCg

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) July 3, 2023

We love accessories! Meghan wearing –
Shoes – @Hermes_Paris – https://t.co/zKzEx6frRr
Hat – @JanessaLeone – https://t.co/dRbEmff414
Sunglasses – @MaisonValentino
Belt – @RalphLauren – https://t.co/2rZjlOraSk pic.twitter.com/5BWNHOsPzT

— What Meghan Wore (@whatmegwore) July 2, 2023

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

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On Friday, the Supreme Court released their ruling on 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case involving the completely hypothetical situation of a straight homophobic bigot/web designer who didn’t want to design a website for a gay couple’s wedding. SCOTUS decided, in a 6-3 decision, that it’s every business’s right and every person’s right to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people under the banner of “religion.” As in, if a business owner is a “Christian,” they have the right to not do work for gay folks. I would assume the next case will be: Christians shouldn’t have to work alongside Muslims, Hindus, Jewish people or atheists either. That it’s perfectly acceptable for Christians (and only Christians) to discriminate against anyone, at any time. This isn’t just about religion and gay rights though – I can already see where this will go effectively immediately – “Christian” doctors and pharmacists refusing treatment to women seeking birth control, Plan B and abortions.

As I said, the case was hypothetical – or to put it another way, it was an outright lie. The Colorado web designer who took her case to the Supreme Court claimed that a gay man wanted her to design a site for his gay wedding. Except the “gay man” who allegedly approached this woman isn’t gay and he never tried to hire her for anything. This homophobic bigot, Lorie Smith, completely fabricated the whole case and got the whackjob Supreme Court to side in her favor. It wasn’t even like they waited for a perfect “test case” – the hyper-conservative movement just blatantly lied to get SCOTUS to dramatically alter the anti-discrimination laws and equal protection.

Michael Imperioli responded to the news of the case by writing this on Instagram:

i’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching The Sopranos, The White Lotus, Goodfellas or any movie or tv show I’ve been in. Thank you Supreme Court for allowing me to discriminate and exclude those who I don’t agree with and am opposed to. USA ! USA!

[From Imperioli’s IG]

Good for him.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.

Okay, so I just… have no idea about cricket. I can’t explain what’s happening in the sport, but I do know that a “century” is a good thing (?) and that the Ashes is a very big deal. Or is it called the Ashes Test? See, I’m not even sure. I just know that the Ashes is 140 years old, and it’s always Britain versus Australia. For cricket fans, the Ashes is a BFD. The Ashes has been happening for the past week, and on Saturday, the fourth day, Prince William brought his oldest son along to watch cricket.

Prince William and Prince George did some father-son bonding while attending a cricket match on Saturday. The two royals — who love to take in sporting events together — were photographed in a private box as they watched England take on Australia on the fourth day of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s in London.

Prince William, 41, wore a light blue button-down shirt with a blue blazer and black shades as he watched the on-field action alongside his eldest son. The little prince, 9, took after his father, wearing a similar outfit consisting of a checked shirt and a dark blue sports coat.

The two were caught often making similar faces during the game as Prince William appeared to point out and explain plays to his son. They were even captured sipping on their drinks in unison in one photo.

At the match, an ecstatic Prince George was also presented with a mini-replica of the Ashes urn by Richard Thompson, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board. Photographers captured the moment on camera, including a proud Prince William smiling over at his son’s excited reaction.

During a break in the play, the pair stood up to get some refreshments. A seemingly hungry Prince George was captured on camera digging into a slice of pizza while he looked out over the venue as his father chatted with other guests including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

[From People]

I have no idea what George is really like, but I do feel like this “sports-mad” persona is kind of being forced on him. It’s clear that he likes football a lot, but I’m not sure he’s actually all that keen on tennis and cricket. Still, he was being a good kid and paying attention. He seemed more into the pizza than the cricket, but I’m sure he liked having a day out with his dad. If Kate had been there, she would have been in his face, pointing at random things and freeze-posing. Speaking of, William has been spending so much time away from Kate recently. He ran away from Ascot to go clubbing with his bros. He launched Homewards in multiple cities without Kate. He ran off to Norfolk (cough) solo to attend some county fair. And now he’s acting like a divorced dad who planned out a “fun outing” with one of his kids for the weekend.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Getty.

This coming week is Holyrood Week in Scotland, also known as “Royal Week.” Every year, the British monarch travels up to Edinburgh for Holyrood Week and there’s a ceremony at Holyrood Palace where the monarch is given “the keys to the city.” The monarch – and usually some other assorted royals – spend the week traveling around Scotland, doing various events. It’s a big deal this year because it will be King Charles’s first Holyrood Week as monarch, and because he’s going to have a special coronation ceremony in Scotland on July 5th. Guess how the Daily Mail framed that simple fact, that Charles is going to have a lite Scottish Chubbly? If you guessed “they’re going to talk about Prince Harry,” you would be correct.

Scotland will celebrate King Charles ascension to the throne with a Coronation-style ‘Thanksgiving service’ in Edinburgh next week – but only one of the monarch’s sons will be there to witness the historic event. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who have the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay north of the border, are expected to join the king and queen in a regal procession through the city on Wednesday. The ceremony, at St Giles’ Cathedral, is a key part of Royal Week, with Charles and Camilla undertaking several engagements in Scotland.

Prince Harry is not thought to be attending the symbolic July 5th Honours of Scotland service to officially mark his father becoming Head of State in Scotland. The Duke of Sussex attended the Coronation on May 6th without wife Meghan Markle and flew in for just 24 hours to see his father crowned at Westminster Abbey, before jetting back to his home in Montecito, California.

Prince Harry’s likely absence from the service shows relations between father and son remain less than warm.

Next week’s ceremony involves a people’s procession of about 100 community groups collecting the honours from Edinburgh Castle. The procession will then be escorted to the cathedral by the Royal Regiment of Scotland and its Shetland pony mascot, Corporal Cruachan IV, supported by cadet musicians from the combined cadet force pipes and drums.

Meanwhile, a royal procession will travel from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to the cathedral, with the public lining the Royal Mile to view both processions.

[From The Daily Mail]

LMAO. I honestly didn’t know, before now, that they were doing this big ceremony in Edinburgh for a separate coronation celebration, but it’s hilarious that THIS is the way the papers are talking about it. Like, does Harry even know? Does Harry even care? The answer is probably “no” on both counts. I would also assume that Harry wasn’t invited to Holyrood Week in general, and that Charles is going to have to make due with Buttons and Bald. Buttons isn’t going to hang around Scotland for the whole week either – given how many Wimbledon dresses she’s been re-wearing lately, I think we can safely say that she’s itching to watch some tennis from the Royal Box. Why oh why must she be pestered with this tedious royal work during Wimbledon???

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Last December, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a horrific column in the Sun about Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. Clarkson, much like Piers Morgan, is a disgusting old man with an intense and violent fixation on Meghan. His Sun column was full of lurid, vile imagery about how Meghan needed to be stripped naked and marched through the streets so people could fling excrement at her. Clarkson wrote that column just days after he had a holiday lunch with Queen Camilla. Camilla’s office had nothing to say, and Buckingham Palace was officially and totally silent on the matter – no condemnation for Clarkson, no statement of support for the mother of two of the king’s grandchildren. Later, we learned that Clarkson emailed an apology TO HARRY on Christmas Day.

Surprisingly, there was fallout around the column. The Sun eventually deleted it from its online archives amid widespread condemnation for the tabloid and Clarkson. There were thousands of complaints about the column to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), a sort of vague clearinghouse which “regulates” print media in the UK. IPSO is pretty toothless and non-confrontational when it comes to the bile and hate speech regularly printed in the British media, but this was a special case – Clarkson’s column was simply too incendiary, and too many people were paying attention. So IPSO handed down one of their biggest punishments ever:

The U.K.’s media watchdog, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), has upheld two complaints lodged by women’s rights charities against Jeremy Clarkson’s December column in The Sun about Meghan Markle.

Variety can reveal that after a months-long process, IPSO found that the “Grand Tour” host’s column breached Clause 12 of the regulator’s Editors’ Code of Practice, which relates to discrimination. The case marks the first time in its nine-year history that IPSO has upheld a complaint on the basis of sexism.

As a result, The Sun has been instructed to publish a summary of the regulator’s findings in the spot where Clarkson’s column regularly appears in the print edition, and reference the decision on its front page and website homepage for 24 hours — something the tabloid hasn’t been forced to do since 2016, when its front-page “Queen Backs Brexit” splash was found to have breached press regulations.

“This is the most significant sanction that we would impose for an individual complaint,” IPSO CEO Charlotte Dewar told Variety in an exclusive interview. “It’s not about whether or not people are offended by something or whether they dislike it; it’s specifically about whether it has breached the Editors’ Code. We wanted to be really, really clear about what specifically the complainants thought in the article had breached the code, and then — as a fair process requires — get the publication’s position on that.”

IPSO received more than 25,100 complaints from the British public about Clarkson’s column — an astonishing figure that broke the record for the most complaints ever received by the org for an article. The column led Amazon Prime Video to distance itself from Clarkson, despite his hit U.K. original series “Clarkson’s Farm.” As first revealed by Variety, the streamer won’t commission any new programs with the former “Top Gear” presenter in the future. While Clarkson has thrown doubt on this decision via social media, sources indicate that the relationship is over.

In its ruling, IPSO found that Clarkson’s column made a “pejorative and prejudicial” reference to Markle’s sex, which relates to Clause 12, but did not uphold other parts of the complaint that said the article was inaccurate, harassed Markle and included “discriminatory references to her on the grounds of race.” The regulator’s rejection of discrimination on racial grounds will be of particular interest in the U.K., where racism in the media has been a key criticism by Prince Harry and Markle.

[From Variety]

You can read more about IPSO’s ruling in Variety’s exclusive. While I’m glad that at least something happened and there was some acknowledgement that Clarkson’s column was vile, this was a mild response more than six months after the offense. IPSO refuses to acknowledge the racial aspect of it either, focusing more of the sexual violence of Clarkson’s imagery and ignoring the fact that Clarkson seemingly believes that Meghan needs to be punished because she’s a woman AND because she’s Black. And the fact that this is the first time IPSO has ever ordered any kind of punitive action on the basis of sexism… lol. I read a lot of British print media and the sexist drivel which appears in mainstream media over there is astonishing.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

To promote the new season of And Just Like That, Kristin Davis gave an absolutely charming interview to the Telegraph. I normally wouldn’t consider an interview “charming,” but I was charmed by Davis’s honesty, realness and positive energy. She’s a single mom by choice, she adopted two Black children, and she’s not the prissy, uptight Charlotte in real life. She manages to navigate tricky conversations with grace, conversations about “woke” whatever, race, ageism, cosmetic work and Kim Cattrall. Some highlights:

The original ‘Sex and the City’: ‘People forget how shocking it was. Four women over the age of 30 starring in a show where men are secondary and we’re talking about relationships and sex openly.’

On the criticism that these characters should be left in the past: ‘Why shouldn’t our lives still be interesting? Society expects you to diminish yourself as you age. But why should we? As Mary Steenburgen [the 70-year-old Oscar-winning actress] said the other day, “I’m still alive.”’

On the criticisms of how ‘woke’ AJLT is: ‘I’m so tired of that word. I feel like it has been weaponised. And it’s unfortunate – because it really just means being educated about what other people are going through. Why is that a bad thing?’

She never married: ‘I think it was a reaction to the South [she grew up in South Carolina, the only child of a data analyst and a psychology professor], where they’re very, very focused on getting married soon. There’s pressure. My parents were not like that. [They] were much more hippie and I was more independent. I remember saying very young: “I am never getting married.” I was like, “Down with the patriarchy!” I did not want to stay [in the South] with all the blonde people. I’m sorry. No offence.’

On Kim Cattrall’s absence from AJLT: ‘You have to respect people’s wishes. I’m not gonna waste energy on it. I can’t change anybody. I do understand fans’ feelings – that they’re upset… I wish I could fix it, but I can’t, it’s not in my power.’

Her children Gemma and Wilson are now 11 and five. ‘I’d always thought about adopting. But it took me forever to actually do it. They give you this form and there are a bunch of races listed there and you’re supposed to check the ones you want. I thought that was nuts so I just checked “any”.’ She has become very attuned to any hints of racism. ‘People make crazy comments. They want to know why my tall daughter doesn’t play basketball. And when you have a boy, it’s really frightening to look at the news.’ Home, she says, is ‘hectic’. ‘They’re very sporty right now. My daughter’s running track and my son is obsessed with basketball and soccer…”

She barely dates: ‘I have a lot of mom friends who want to set me up, I can’t deal with it… I’ve tried because life is short, right? Sometimes you think “That might work.” But it’s a challenge… It’s an energy issue. Twice I tried new relationships: one with someone I had known for many years, someone brilliant in our industry… He got upset with me that I hadn’t paid attention to something work-wise that he’d done and I was like, “Dude”.’

She talks openly about the cosmetic work she’s done: ‘It’s hard to be confronted with your younger self at all times. And it’s a challenge to remember that you don’t have to look like that. The internet wants you to – but they also don’t want you to. They’re very conflicted…’ At first she just tried Botox. ‘I was super-excited I didn’t have to have my lateral lines. But I didn’t do anything else for a long time.’ Then came the fillers: ‘I have done fillers and it’s been good and I’ve done fillers and it’s been bad. I’ve had to get them dissolved and I’ve been ridiculed relentlessly. And I have shed tears about it. It’s very stressful.’

Now, she says, she has a more laissez-faire attitude to the whole thing. ‘It’s whatever. I can’t keep it up. I don’t have time. You’re trusting doctors [but] people personally blame us when it goes wrong – [as if] I jabbed a needle in my face…’ She is referring to some work on her lips. ‘No one told me it didn’t look good for the longest time. But luckily I do have good friends who did say eventually. The thing is you don’t smile at yourself in the mirror. Who smiles at themselves in the mirror? Crazy people.’

[From The Telegraph]

She also tosses off the fact that she “gave up drinking in her early 20s” because she was an alcoholic back then. Which I didn’t know, but she makes it sound like it’s something that everyone knows? She also says that she has it in her AJLT contract that she gets to keep all of Charlotte’s clothes. Which is amazing. Basically, she just sounds like a normal, stressed-out single mom and working mom. She barely has time to date, she’s experimented with cosmetic stuff, she’s just trying to get through the day, basically. Anyway, she seems cool.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.