The Times of London and Sunday Times have a new series called “The Duchy Files,” where they’re exposing the shocking ways in which King Charles and Prince William exploit businesses, charities, public services and everyday citizens through the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall is the purview/income of the Prince of Wales. The Duchy of Lancaster “belongs” to the sovereign, who is now King Charles. People know that the duchys are vast real estate networks, but I always assumed that the duchies were mostly commercial property (office buildings & the like) and farms. I didn’t know that the duchies consisted of sh-t like “all of the shoreline and riverbeds on Devon’s coast.” The Times has revealed the first part of their series, and here’s a link to the coverage, which is insane. Some highlights:

In a five-month investigation, we used the royal addresses to uncover their business contracts and discovered how the duchies are making millions of pounds each year by charging government departments, councils, businesses, mining companies and the general public via a series of commercial rents and feudal levies on land largely seized by medieval monarchs. The Duchy Files show the royals charge for the right to cross rivers; offload cargo onto the shore; run cables under their beaches; operate schools and charities; and even dig graves. They earn revenue from toll bridges, ferries, sewage pipes, churches, village halls, pubs, distilleries, gas pipelines, boat moorings, opencast and underground mines, car parks, rental homes and wind turbines.

The royals’ formal duties, palaces and official households are paid for each year by the sovereign grant. This is funded by an agreed percentage of the income that the government-run Crown Estate makes by managing land surrendered by the monarch 260 years ago. Next year the grant will give the royals £132 million. But the King and prince also receive private incomes from the profit generated by their duchies. Last year the Duchy of Lancaster raised £27.4 million for the King and the Duchy of Cornwall raised £23.6 million for William, which they can use as they see fit, for example to fund their private homes, personal income and staff.

Our Insight investigation reveals: All 5,410 landholdings and properties held by the royal duchies[ The NHS will pay the King’s duchy £11m over 15 years to rent a warehouse for ambulances; Ministry of Justice pays William’s duchy £1.5m a year to use Dartmoor prison; The army pays to train on Dartmoor, the navy to moor and refuel its fleet; Charges are levied on Liverpool container port, the Mersey ferry — and a sewage pipe; Charities have paid millions to rent a 1960s office block in central London.

The Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall stretch beyond the counties they are named after to cover 180,000 acres of England and Wales. They are largely made up of land and seashores seized by kings in the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest. The royals surrendered control of the Crown Estate to the Treasury in the 18th century but the monarch and his heir were allowed to keep their duchies, partly because they did not generate much income. However, their revenues have soared in recent decades and today the duchies are sprawling modern property businesses with assets jointly worth £1.8 billion, according to their annual reports.

The Duchy Files reveal that both the monarch and the prince have contracts with taxpayer-funded public services that pay them millions. The Duchy of Cornwall land extends along large stretches of the seashore and rivers around the southwest of England, including the bed of the Dart estuary, which runs alongside the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where Britain’s naval officers are trained. But the lease document below shows that over the past 20 years, the duchy has charged the Ministry of Defence a total of at least £900,000 for the right to moor boats on the waters surrounding the college, which are needed to train the recruits on the river.

Thirty miles down the coast at Plymouth, the prince’s duchy owns the shoreline next to Devonport — western Europe’s largest naval base and a refuelling site for Britain’s Trident nuclear submarines. William is commodore-in-chief of the submarine service. In 2017, a 125-year deal was struck that required the navy to pay the duchy £10,000 a year for access to its own oil depot, so it can refuel its warships. At the same base, the navy has been paying the prince a further £3,250 a year to use a jetty. The duchy’s lease specified that the MoD had to spend at least £900,000 on the jetty’s construction, even though its ownership will eventually revert back to the prince when the lease ends. When the navy wanted to deploy navigation beacons on the sea at Plymouth Sound, the duchy charged them £100.

The King is the head of the armed forces and the prince is a lieutenant colonel in the army. Yet William’s duchy, which owns 67,500 acres of Dartmoor, is charging the military for the right to train on the moorland under a 21-year deal struck when Charles was Duke of Cornwall. The duchy describes this as “a private arrangement between landlord and tenant”. When we sought disclosure of the lease under the Freedom of Information Act, the MoD responded with a copy of the lease pictured below, but redacted the amount paid, and even blanked out the prince’s name. Philip Sanders, a local Conservative councillor and a Dartmoor National Park warden, said: “I see no reason why the duchy couldn’t agree to let the MoD use the moor without charge because it’s the training of troops for the defence of our land.”

In the middle of the national park stands HMP Dartmoor. Built by the Admiralty with taxpayers’ money in the 19th century to hold French prisoners in the Napoleonic wars, today it is a category C prison for 640 non-violent inmates. Under its terms, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is required to pay the prince £1.5 million a year — at least £37.5 million over the 25 years of the lease. The annual rent is more than double the amount paid in the 1980s, even after taking into account rises for inflation. Within the contract is a “dilapidations credit” clause that compels the MoJ to spend a minimum of £68 million over the next decade updating the buildings at the prison.

[From The Times]

Did you know that William gets £1.5 million a year for Dartmoor prison? Jesus. And charging the military exorbitant rates for the use of what should be federal land. The Times went on from there to detail how Charles and William’s duchies charge charities and public services like “garage space for ambulances” (£829,348 a year) and leasing land for a fire station (£612,000). The duchies are also charging exorbitant rental rates for SCHOOLS, from elementary schools up through a couple of colleges. One MP, Sir Edward Leigh, the MP, suggested that it’s actually really tacky that the royals profit so heavily from public services: “They’ve got to accept they’re not a business. Don’t make a profit from public services like the armed forces and the NHS. This shows the value of scrutiny, because from now on, if they are charging [a public service], they will know it’s going to be scrutinised and people are going to ask why and they’ve got to justify it.” Justify it? How are people not rioting in the streets? Instead of putting public funds into public services, millions of taxpayer dollars are going to “renting” seabeds, coastlines and land from Charles and William, all of it based on lands “seized” just after the Norman Conquest??? This is asinine.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Robert Hardman has added new chapters to his royal biography Charles III: New King, New Court, The Inside Story, which came out in January. Hardman has basically provided those new chapters to the Mail to publish, and we can clearly see that King Charles and Camilla’s minions were doing a lot of talking. But it looks like Prince William and Kate’s minions wanted in on the royal rewrite too. Hardman devotes a good chunk of time to trying to reimagine what the past year has been for William and Kate, given all of the extremely weird sh-t that we saw with our own eyes. Remember the Mother’s Day frankenphoto? Remember how William didn’t bother to go his godfather’s memorial service in Windsor? Remember how the Sun completely fabricated a fake-Kate sighting? Hardman has explanations and complaints! Some highlights:

On Charles and Kate’s back-to-back health announcements in January: Royal aides now smile at some of the more outlandish theories, pointing out that the two medical conditions had, simply, been a coincidence. ‘It was not an issue of, ‘Let’s all make sure it’s on the same day’,’ says one of those involved. ‘There just happened to be a certain time limit in which announcements had to be made for logistical reasons.’

William also refused to go to a funeral in South Africa: At the last minute, however, the King had asked [Princess Anne] to fly to Namibia to represent him at the funeral of the former president, Hage Geingob. Traditionally it would have been the job of the heir to the throne to attend an occasion like this (monarchs do not, as a rule, attend funerals). But the new Prince of Wales, William, was otherwise preoccupied. Barely noticed by the media, the Princess Royal flew via South Africa on commercial flights to the Namibian capital Windhoek, returned to London overnight and was back in action for an engagement in Berkshire on the Monday.

William missed his godfather’s memorial service: The next day, however, the Prince of Wales was absent again. He had been due to attend a memorial service for his godfather, ex-King Constantine of the Hellenes, at Windsor Castle. With next to no notice, it was announced he would not be attending for ‘personal’ reasons. On social media and in mainstream media, patience was wearing thin. Given that he lived a short walk from St George’s Chapel, what could possibly have prevented him from spending an hour commemorating his godfather?

William’s bizarre behavior: It was well known that, like his father before him, the Prince was determined not to be dictated to by the monarch’s office. ‘William and his team like to police their own lanes. His father did exactly the same when he was Prince of Wales,’ points out one former member of staff. Even so, the Prince’s behaviour seemed hard to explain. And no explanation was forthcoming, from his office or the King’s team. In spite of the increasingly deranged speculation about the Princess’s whereabouts, the Waleses were sticking to their original strategy. The Prince continued to go about his official engagements while the Princess recovered in private.

Kate has no constitutional role: ‘No constitutional responsibility sits on the Princess of Wales and never will,’ says a senior aide to the King. ‘She is not in the line of succession. She plays an absolutely vital supporting role to the Prince of Wales and in bringing up their children who are in the line of succession. But she herself is not. Her situation is different and it can be treated differently.’

The Mother’s Day frankenphoto: This was not, aides insist, a response to noises off. It was something she had planned all along to mark Mothering Sunday. Rather than calm down the commentariat and the cyber-trolls, however, the image only set them off all over again. Some had spotted small inconsistencies with the photograph – a missing section of a child’s sleeve or blurring of a knee, for example. Clearly, the photo had undergone minor editing prior to release. The Waleses and their staff were astonished by what happened next. On the same Sunday, the world’s four main international photographic agencies issued a ‘kill notice’, industry jargon for retracting a photograph. ‘At closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image,’ Associated Press announced, declaring that the photograph had thus fallen short of its standards. Getty, AFP and Reuters said much the same.

The palace thought the outcry was exaggerated: While the industry’s concerns about the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to the integrity of mainstream photography were well known, this seemed an oddly exaggerated, almost performative, response. ‘There were several factors,’ says one of the Waleses’ team. ‘Anything written or said about the Princess of Wales at that point was at fever pitch and front page news. It also spoke to the nervousness of the photography industry around AI and their future. Even so, the reaction seemed extremely disproportionate.’ As far as the Princess was concerned, says the aide, ‘this had just been a mother deciding to share a personal picture of her and her children on Mother’s Day to bring some joy to the nation. That’s all’.

Will & Kate weren’t worried about the dramas they caused: Within Kensington Palace and Adelaide Cottage, the Waleses’ home at Windsor, there was no great soul-searching the next day. ‘The Prince and Princess have agency in everything,’ says the Kensington Palace staffer. ‘They are the final decision-makers.’ If there was frustration that the media should be making quite such a meal of a well-intentioned, homespun gesture, there was no time to dwell on it.

Why Kate released a message before Trooping: The last-minute nature of her appearance was a reflection of that. ‘We wanted to give the green light that she was going to the parade when we knew, rather than to dangle the possibility,’ says one aide. ‘So it was very late in the day. But she was very keen on sharing an update on her progress.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Months ago, Robert Jobson revealed the fact that Kate had to take credit for the frankenphoto because William and his staff tossed her right under the bus and refused to take any part of the blame for releasing an extremely manipulated photo. Now Hardman is pulling some kind of “the media overreacted, this was performative outrage!” The media did not overreact – agencies like Reuters and AFP went to Kensington Palace and asked for clarification or the original image, and KP refused. That’s why the Mother’s Day photo was killed on Oscar night. It wasn’t just some minor edits either.

The emphasis on Kate’s lack of constitutional role is fascinating too, because that really is William’s perspective and Charles’s perspective too. The Princess of Wales is expendable, unimportant, not constitutionally relevant. That’s why they bungled everything so badly throughout the year too – it never occurred to them that people might want a health update on Kate simply because they were worried about her as a person. It never would have occurred to them that a “simple, homespun gesture” like providing a health update through a completely manipulated photo would actually destroy their credibility and cause more confusion.

Top ten stories about Princess Kate’s Frankenphoto Scandal

News outlets issued an unprecedented “kill order” for the photo of Kate and her kids and experts say her head is pasted on! Get the top ten stories about this when you sign up for our mailing list.

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Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Kensington Palace.

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Jason Kelce went viral this weekend. Jason was at Penn State’s Beaver Stadium to make an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay show for the Penn State/Ohio game. As he was walking through a crowd of students, some dipsh-t dude bro shouted “How does it feel your brother’s a f— dating Taylor Swift?” He called it out while holding up his phone, which was presumably recording the interaction. Jason responded by grabbing the phone out of his hand and smashing it to the ground.

In now-viral footage shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, Nov. 2, the retired Philadelphia Eagles star — who was outside of Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., for the Penn State-Ohio State game — could be seen walking while football fans surrounded him. As the person filming the footage raised a fist to Jason, 36, and called out his name for a fist bump, another man nearby yelled the homophobic slur in the retired Philadelphia Eagles star’s direction.

“Hey, Kelce. How does it feel your brother’s a f—– dating Taylor Swift?” the man asked, using the slur to refer to Travis, who has been dating Swift, 34, since 2023.

Seconds later, Jason turned around, grabbed the man’s phone out of his hands and smashed it on the ground.

“Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason,” the initial X user who posted the clip wrote alongside it. “Wild scene in State College.”

Additional footage circulating on X showed a closer-up angle of Jason smashing the phone on asphalt, before picking it up and walking away. The phone owner, who was wearing a Penn State hoodie at the time of the incident, could be seen in multiple clips walking closely behind and seemingly recording Jason before the altercation took place.

Another scene shared on X, which was apparently filmed after Jason smashed the man’s phone, showed the hooded Penn State fan walking through a crowd to pick his phone off the ground. “Give me my phone, bro,” he seemingly said to Jason.

The NFL alum, who grabbed the device first, then stood in front of the man and said, “Who’s the f—– now?” as other people appeared to intervene.

[From People]

There really was no reason for that jerk to get in Jason’s face like that other than he wanted to go viral. He probably hoped to get a reaction from Jason and send it into Barstool Sports. Well, dude got a reaction and went viral alright. Destruction of property is never the answer, but I bet it feels pretty satisfying. If you don’t want to get your phone smashed by someone you’re shouting homophobic slurs at, perhaps don’t hold your phone out to record the interaction. Also, don’t shout out homophobic slurs. And yes, the Swifties immediately made their own TikToks of Jason smashing the phone set to Taylor songs like “You Need to Calm Down.” I expect nothing less. They’re so creative.

Every angle of Jason Kelce smashing a fans phone for calling his brother Travis Kelce a f-t for dating Taylor Swift pic.twitter.com/Ndb2zMiTwq

— LASHY BILLS (@LASHYBILLS) November 2, 2024

My TikTok feed is just Swifties making sick edits of Jason Kelce and I love it pic.twitter.com/e7vcYsPUhy

— Mark (@lebatardshowfan) November 3, 2024

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A post shared by Jason Kelce (@jason.kelce)

This year’s presidential election cycle has been unique because Saturday Night Live really hasn’t been a factor. Some clips have gone viral here and there, some Weekend Update jokes, but really, SNL just hasn’t had the juice with political humor this go-around. If anything, there have been complaints about how SNL has misread the mood. Possibly because (just my opinion) they don’t have very good political comedians or political writers anymore? In any case, I didn’t know if VP Kamala Harris would even make a point of going on SNL this year, even if she only had nice things to say about Maya Rudolph’s impression. But Harris did just that, in a somewhat surprise move. She flew last minute to NYC and did a cute appearance with Maya:

It was cute. I enjoyed it, and Maya looked great. The “Keep Kamala and Carry on-ala” is wonderful. There’s so much space for Kamala Harris to lean into her “cool, fun aunt” brand.

There are already bedwetting Democrats crying about how VP Harris should have been in Michigan rather than on SNL. We’ll find out on Tuesday and Wednesday (I guess?) about whether Harris made the right choice. But this wasn’t some huge detour out of VP Harris’s schedule – she had just come off of a huge rallies in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina earlier in the day, and all of Harris’s surrogates were doing high-profile events across the country all weekend, including Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Tim Walz. VP Harris continued on to Michigan after her brief detour in NYC. It was fine. I suspect it will be just fine. Especially because just hours before VP Harris’s SNL appearance, Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer revealed that Harris is on track to win Iowa. There are so many scenarios in which Harris-Walz gets to 270 in the electoral college, I’m just saying.

Photos courtesy of SNL/NBC and SNL’s IG.

It never fails to amuse me that Britain’s sycophantic royalist media cannot get on board with Prince William’s environmental efforts but they absolutely HATE his homelessness projects. William’s decision to center himself in a palace-produced documentary about homelessness seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. The gloves are finally off. The Daily Mirror is piggybacking on Channel 4 and the Sunday Times’s investigations into the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall is the vast real estate network which brings in something like $30 million annually for Prince William. A good chunk of those profits come from sh-t like “charging charities, the military and public services exorbitant rental rates.” But some of the money comes from old-fashioned private-home rentals. As it turns out, William is a sleazy slumlord, at least according to an investigation done by the Daily Mirror. You can read the full piece here.

Scores of rental properties owned by Prince William fail to meet the minimum legal energy efficiency standards for landlords, we can reveal. We found some of his tenants are at risk of fuel poverty, living in hard to heat homes that are riddled with damp and black mould. Our investigation with Channel 4 Dispatches has found that as many as one in seven of William’s inherited Duchy of Cornwall’s residential rental properties have the lowest Energy Performance Certificate ratings of F or G.

It comes as the taxpayer is funding a £369m renovation of Buckingham Palace and Prince William launches his campaign against homelessness and for “everyone having a right to a safe and stable home”. One tenant said: “The slick PR will stick in the throat of many tenants. He should start by bringing the homes he already owns up to modern standards.”

The Duchy has more than 600 rental properties and over a 15-month investigation we identified nearly 500 of them. We found 50 Duchy properties rated F and 20 rated G, including six properties with the lowest EPC score of one point out of 100. We spoke to a number of tenants on condition of anonymity who are living in cold, poorly insulated homes, often without central heating and many relying on the most expensive solid fuels for heat. It has been illegal since 2020 for landlords to rent out properties that are rated below an E under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards regulations without a valid exemption.

Since the new rules, Prince William and the previous Duke of Cornwall King Charles III have between them received £91m in profits from the Duchy. One tenant with no central heating spends hundreds of pounds a month on coal and wood to heat just two rooms in his house. He told us: “It gets miserably cold especially in the winter, you can see through the roof. I can only heat two rooms in my home using a wood burner and a coal fire, and the landlord told me that my rent was going to be put up considerably if they put in radiators. There is mould appearing on soft furnishings and clothes because the air is so cold and damp. To make my property efficient it needs to be insulated but they won’t do that because of the cost. But you don’t want to say anything against your landlord for fear of eviction. There could be consequences.”

Another elderly tenant with no central heating and just one fireplace for warmth was under a blanket when we visited his home in early September. A third told us: “The house is freezing. We were told that it is uninhabitable. When the wind blows the curtains start swinging. There’s no heating upstairs at all. I asked about double glazing and they said Prince Charles doesn’t like it. Well he doesn’t have to live here.” A fourth said: “The house is cold and it is a struggle but there is nowhere else to live here. They are not good landlords.”

Campaigner Jonathan Bean, a spokesperson for Fuel Poverty Action, said: “It’s a disgrace that a billion pound royal estate appears to be acting like a rogue landlord. And getting away with it. King Charles and Prince William have profited from renting out property that fails to meet even basic standards. These low standards cause misery by making heating unaffordable, leading to major health risks from cold and mould. F and G rated homes can cost three times more to heat, which is unaffordable for those on lower incomes. Renters are scared to complain about grim conditions, for fear of being evicted or subjected to rent increases. People are forced to suffer in silence. This royal mess demonstrates the fundamental power imbalance at the heart of this country’s broken housing system. Tenants may have rights in law, but in reality they are at the mercy of their landlords.”

[From The Daily Mirror]

The Mirror points out that landlords can apply for exemptions to the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards regulations, and that the Duchy of Cornwall has applied ten times, usually citing that “the work would cost more than £3,500 to complete.” THAT is what is especially outrageous to me – yes, it’s appalling that William is a slumlord, but he literally inherited this vast real estate network which provides him with $30 million a year or more, and he is too stupid, cheap and lazy to do really basic upkeep on his properties. The homelessness expert and keen environmentalist is a slumlord who traps seniors in freezing, moldy rentals which cost thousands to heat. And instead of just doing adequate eco-friendly updates, William wanders around, calling himself a credible environmentalist.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Robert Hardman has updated his terrible book, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, with three new chapters and a new contract with the Daily Mail. Hardman is a Charles-loyalist more than anything, and all of his stories have the stink of Charles and Camilla’s narratives and outright lies. One of the big headlines from Hardman’s new chapters is that QEII planned on evicting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from Frogmore Cottage herself. That is never-heard-before lie straight from King Charles. It was one of the most unpopular and cruelest decisions he made in recent years, to evict the Sussexes from their safe home in the UK. The Sussexes had a valid lease and they paid for everything in the renovation of Frogmore. QEII “gave” them Frogmore as a gift. Now Charles would have everyone believe that QEII would have taken it away from them to give to Prince Andrew. That’s not all – Hardman also has some convenient lies about how much “help” was offered to the Duchess of Sussex. More highlights from Hardman’s book:

QEII’s plan for Frogmore: However, it transpires that even [QEII] wanted to find the Duke another home. ‘Had she lived another year, he would have been out,’ says a former adviser to Elizabeth II firmly. ‘It was her plan to move him out, to end the lease for the Sussexes at Frogmore Cottage and to move Andrew in there. It was mainly a money thing, as she could see it was becoming unsustainable.’ Many of the late Queen’s staff were more than happy to make it happen, too, given the Duke’s conduct prior to his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview and the end of his career in public life. The Queen’s staff had wasted no time annexing his rooms inside Buckingham Palace.

Who will live in Royal Lodge if Andrew finally moves out? Since the Prince and Princess of Wales have shown no interest, for the time being, in moving into what would certainly be a suitable home the question has continued to be asked: who would live at Royal Lodge if the Duke was indeed prevailed upon to leave? An intriguing suggestion began to emerge during the course of this year: what about the King and Queen themselves? ‘The King loves his brother, of course,’ says one senior source. ‘But the Duke is living in an enormous house on his own and it used to be the Sovereign’s house. George VI and Queen Elizabeth never moved out of there.’ Aides are adamant that the King has no wish to take up residence there himself, Queen Camilla even less so. However, he is also determined to ensure that a house with a distinguished regal past is not left mired in uncertainty.

Harry’s visit in February to see his father: The King had been due to leave with the Queen for Sandringham, but delayed his departure so that he could see his son at Clarence House. It was not a long meeting – less than an hour – and the Palace released no details. Crucially, nor did anyone in the Sussex camp. Given the vast amount of awkward baggage to be unpacked following the Duke’s multiple swipes at the monarchy over the previous three years, this was not a moment for anything other than simple, urgent expressions of love and compassion….Within Buckingham Palace it is accepted that the King is open to some sort of rapprochement with the Sussexes – not least because he has barely seen his US-based grandchildren Archie and Lilibet, now aged five and three. And any sort of serious medical diagnosis tends to focus the mind on the passing of time.

Charles is so disciplined about the Sussexes: ‘He always had an iron discipline about not stirring things up with the Sussexes,’ says a former member of staff. ‘It can take a huge effort to do nothing when you’re being criticised.’

Harry stayed at a hotel during his visit in May: The King and his staff had been well aware of Prince Harry’s travel plans, however, to the extent that the monarch had even offered his son accommodation at Buckingham Palace. The Prince had chosen to stay at a hotel instead. ‘We were told it was for security reasons,’ says a member of the King’s staff. ‘I’m not sure you could get anywhere more secure than the Palace. Maybe he was worried about the mice.’ Sources close to the Sussexes explained that any Palace accommodation would, by definition, be inside a high-profile location and, without appropriate ‘security provision’, it would be safer to stay at an anonymous hotel.

They’re still swearing up & down that they offered help to Meghan: Yet some of those very same officials had tried to give both the Duke and Duchess extra support during their brief royal existence. ‘It was Clive [now Sir Clive Alderton, private secretary to the King] who said that if we could get this right for Harry, we’d be creating a blueprint for future younger sons for generations,’ recalls one staffer from those days. ‘And Clive said, ‘These two need more staff.’ And we seconded people from Clarence House, very expert people, to help them, but the Duchess wouldn’t trust them. Those two were offered considerable resource, and then later said that they had been offered no help. And that was completely wrong.’

[From The Daily Mail]

“And Clive said, ‘These two need more staff.’ And we seconded people from Clarence House, very expert people, to help them, but the Duchess wouldn’t trust them.” I know this is false. Clarence House didn’t do jack sh-t to help Meghan in 2018-2019. They tossed Meghan to the Kensington Palace staff, who basically had nervous breakdowns whenever Meghan asked them to complete a simple task. It was so bad for Meghan that QEII “gave” Meghan one of her own trusted advisors, Christopher Geidt, who was once QEII’s private secretary. One of the complaints I had back in 2016-17 was that no one in Windsor-World seemed to understand that Harry needed his own dedicated office and staff. They kept Harry boxed in at Kensington Palace so that William and Kate could hide behind him and take credit for his work and his ideas. Besides, Charles never would have given staff to Harry and Meghan because his big concern was that he (Charles) couldn’t “afford” for Harry to get married, remember?

What else? At this point, I do believe that Harry was offered a room in the palace when he visited in May, and I also believe that the security situation was janky enough that Harry didn’t trust his father or anyone at the palace. As for all of this sh-t about Frogmore and QEII wanting to evict the Sussexes… lmao, again, this is Charles blaming his dead mother for one of his most unpopular decisions.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar and Cover Images.

In January of this year, Robert Hardman released his palace-approved book, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story. Hardman had a lot of tedious royal gossip, straight from the horse’s mouth (IYKYK). Hilariously, the biggest headline from the book was Hardman initially claiming that Queen Elizabeth II was “furious” and “very angry” that Prince Harry and Meghan named their daughter Lilibet, which was QEII’s family nickname. For a full week or longer, royal commentators lined up to describe QEII’s fury over a baby’s name… only for Hardman to walk it back quickly, because he inadvertently made QEII sound like an a–hole, and he made Buckingham Palace sound like they were a group solely devoted to hating on the Sussexes over every little thing, including their daughter’s name. Well, Hardman is releasing an updated version of the book with three new chapters. His latest tea is that King Charles has stopped giving Prince Andrew an allowance, plus more lies about QEII and the Sussexes.

Prince Andrew has officially been financially cut off by the King, marking a new low in relations between the brothers. An updated biography by acclaimed royal writer Robert Hardman, serialised by the Mail, reveals that despite the Duke of York’s attempts to call the monarch’s bluff, Charles has acted decisively.

In recent weeks he has instructed his Keeper of the Privy Purse, the monarchy’s finance director, to sever his beleaguered younger brother’s annual personal allowance – believed to be in the region of £1 million a year – and no longer pays for his seven-figure private security detail.

‘The duke is no longer a financial burden on the King,’ confirms a source. The King, who has also long made clear his wish to see Andrew move out of his vast 30-room mansion at Windsor, Royal Lodge, has now placed the ball firmly back in his brother’s court. In doing so, he has, Hardman also reveals for the first time, made good on his late mother’s determination to solve the ‘Andrew issue‘ once and for all.

Indeed, impeccably placed sources reveal that had she lived another year, Queen Elizabeth, who had long been accused of being reluctant to take action against her rumoured favourite son, would have forced him to leave his family home and downsize to Frogmore Cottage, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Royal insiders have also hit back at suggestions that they failed to help Meghan when she joined the Royal Family, saying she threw their offer back in their faces. They insist, far from throwing the Duchess to the wolves, as she has suggested, they did everything in their power to help her – and it was she who said no. Sources say the King is not against some sort of rapprochement with the Sussexes despite the barrage of criticism he had received. But it has not been an easy process.

When Harry returned to the UK in May the two did not meet. The prince was offered a room at Buckingham Palace but instead chose to stay in a hotel. ‘We were told it was for security reasons,’ says a member of the King’s staff. ‘I’m not sure you could get anywhere more secure than the Palace.’

As for Andrew, it can now be revealed that his attempts to play a dangerous game of high-stakes poker over Royal Lodge against his brother have backfired. Now that the King has effectively called his brother’s bluff, Andrew is going to have to find the money for the upkeep of his vast property, as well as his security detail, with no visible sign of independent income. According to Hardman, this apparently includes the cost of protecting several valuable and historical works of art and pieces of furniture borrowed from the Royal Collection, the treasure trove of antiques held in trust by the monarch on behalf of the nation.

Andrew has repeatedly asserted that he can continue to pay for his own upkeep, claiming to have found ‘other sources of income‘ related to his contacts in international trade, sufficient to cover all his costs. But His Majesty will be watching with interest. ‘If he can find the money, then that is up to him, but if not, he will find that the King does not have unlimited patience,’ adds an insider. Family friends say although the matter has been temporarily resolved, Andrew’s ‘obstinacy’ has ‘soured’ family relationships.

[From The Daily Mail]

These new book chapters are going to be big royal gossip for the next few weeks, so pace yourselves when it comes to fact-checking and yelling. I’ve already seen additional reporting around some of this stuff (which I’ll cover separately, of course), but let’s just keep it to the Mail’s initial coverage for now. Re: Andrew being cut off, he’s said this entire time that he actually had money stored away. No one knows how or where it came from, but I’ve long known/suspected that Andrew never really “paid back” his mother after he “borrowed” millions of dollars to settle out of court with Virginia Giuffre. So, he still has millions from the sale of his Swiss chalet, plus other mysterious funds, I’m sure. Charles trying to haughtily declare “Andrew can support himself” falls flat when you think about how much money Andrew has squirreled away.

The storyline about “had she lived another year, Queen Elizabeth…would have forced [Andrew] to leave his family home and downsize to Frogmore Cottage” is also a hilarious rewrite from Charles and his courtiers. Charles is trying to blame some of his most unpopular decisions on the mother he hated, forgetting that everyone else loved his mother and no one believes that QEII was as petty and short-sighted as Charles. “My mother was totally going to evict Harry & Meghan, she was totally going to cut off her favorite son, I swear!!!” No one believes you, Chaz.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

In September, Dave Grohl announced that he fathered a child outside of his marriage. Dave, 55, is currently on his second marriage, to 48-year-old Jordyn Bloom. Dave and Jordyn have three daughters together, the youngest of whom is 10 years old. Soon after Dave’s announcement, People Mag reported that Dave hired a divorce lawyer just before he made his big reveal. I’ve thought this whole time that there was another part to the story, something that had not been revealed yet – for example, the side-chick was considering suing him or going public in some way, or some journalist got a tip about the baby. In the past two months, there’s been little movement though – we don’t know the identity of the side-chick, and while Dave’s marriage seems to be going through a rough patch, no one has filed for divorce. Well, here’s an update:

Dave Grohl and wife Jordyn Blum are taking steps toward a reconciliation. The Foo Fighters rocker, 55, retained a divorce attorney shortly before announcing in September that he’d become the father of a new baby with another woman, a source told PEOPLE at the time — but now, an insider says he’s changed his tune.

“He’s no longer working with a divorce attorney and instead hoping to work things out with his wife,” the insider says.

Though Grohl and Blum, 48, have both been spotted without their wedding rings in recent weeks, the musician said in his initial statement that he and his wife of 21 years would “move forward together” after the shock baby announcement.

A second source tells PEOPLE that the rocker “loves his family,” which includes Blum and their daughters Violet, 18, Harper, 15, and Ophelia, 10, and is doing what he can to keep things intact.

“Dave’s been prioritizing his family,” the source says. “He knows he messed up. It’s one of those situations where you don’t realize what you have until you’re about to lose it. He doesn’t want to lose his family.”

In his statement in September, Grohl wrote that he planned to “be a loving and supportive parent” to his new baby daughter, but was working hard to make things right with his wife and older girls. “I love my wife and children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness,” he wrote.

Though Grohl and Blum have not publicly addressed the state of their marriage, multiple sources told PEOPLE that Blum, co-founder of an interior design firm, has known about the baby “for a while.”

[From People]

It’s interesting to me that someone – Jordyn, perhaps? – is keeping People Magazine abreast of developments. As for Dave and the divorce lawyer… it’s possible that the lawyer was being retained for some other purpose besides “divorce.” Jordyn might have wanted a post-nup in which her three daughters are given more rights to Dave’s estate. Most divorce lawyers are experts in family law, meaning the lawyer could have been working out some logistics with the mother of this outside-the-marriage baby (custodial provisions, child support, etc). It seems normal that Dave would have been consulting a lawyer in recent months, and not everything is about a divorce. That being said, I hope Jordyn does what’s right for her. If she feels like staying and working through it, so be it.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Heidi Klum always does too much for Halloween. Yes, this is Heidi as E.T. for her Halloween party last night. [Just Jared]
What is Austin Butler’s involvement in Channing Tatum & Zoe Kravitz’s split? I hope Austin wasn’t involved at all, but who knows. [LaineyGossip]
CB told me that I shouldn’t watch Longlegs. [Pajiba]
Keri Russell keeps it simple. [Go Fug Yourself]
Horoscopes for Scorpio Season. [OMG Blog]
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in Tiffany & Co’s holiday campaign. [RCFA]
Sabrina Carpenter was a Playboy bunny for Halloween. [Seriously OMG]
90 Day Fiance star sentenced to 10 years in prison. [Starcasm]
What are the best horror movies on Tubi? [Hollywood Life]
Spotlight on male model Stefano Tomadini. [Socialite Life]
I love chicken cacciatore, I wish more restaurants had it on their menu. [Buzzfeed]

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Harrison Ford genuinely loves to work, but I think he’s avoided working at various points in his career simply because he hates promoting his projects. If every promotional spot was, like, the Graham Norton Show, Harrison would probably be more involved in promo. But still, he tries to play the game and when he doesn’t feel like it, he goes full curmudgeon. Harrison is currently promoting the new season of Shrinking, one of his few forays into episodic television. He enjoys the show, he enjoys his character, he loves the writing, and so he’s actually giving interviews to promote it. He recently chatted with GQ, and I was charmed by this piece:

How ‘Shrinking’ fans interact with him: “What they have to say is really unusual in my experience. What they have to say is thank you. They say, “Thank you. We love this show.” They don’t want anything. They don’t want an autograph, they don’t want a picture. They just want to share their pleasure in the experience. That’s something different to what the usual exchange is with a stranger.”

His great run of “dad thrillers” in the 1990s: “It was a very different period in our culture. It was a very different period in the movie business. There was a discernible zeitgeist, and the movies seemed to capture that. It was a street that ran both ways—there was a very close connection between movies and the culture. It was a time when many of our extraordinary filmmakers were still working, the Pollacks and Pakulas and even some guys whose names didn’t start with a P. I was lucky enough to have come up in that period of time, and so I got the chance to work with those guys. To me, that was the extraordinary thing about that time—that I had these incredible guys to work with. It was a great period of my life and I’m really grateful for it.

How those kinds of “adult movies” have basically disappeared: “Actually I feel bad for us. I feel bad that we don’t have these stories around us in the world. I mean, it seems this is a particularly bizarre period of human history, I believe. I certainly hope. I hope that we’ll get through it and begin talking to each other instead of at each other. We will begin to work our way through the international issues and the political issues and all this sh-t soup we’re living in…You can’t sit around talking about how great it was in the past. You’ve just got to make something better in the present. That’s all. I’m not that guy.

On the Red Hulk stuff for Marvel: “I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town. Show me the way to go home. I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.

How he chooses his projects at this point of his life: “It’s the quality of writing. It doesn’t matter what the genre is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on television or in movies. It’s the writing, it’s the story, it’s the character, it’s the emotional experience for an audience or for myself. It’s people that I have some feeling that I want to work with, or it’s a quality opportunity. I suppose I should be sitting on my ass, but I actually love working.”

Getting young people involved in aviation: “It’s a great job and it’s become a field where there’s a great demand for pilots. We’ve been talking about the failure to train American pilots. America trains more foreign pilots than they do American pilots. I’m not being xenophobic here. It’s not about having to fly with American pilots. It’s just that we’ve known for a long time that we needed to train more pilots, and we have done that successfully now. Pilots are making a wonderful living when, 15 years ago, they weren’t doing so well at the beginning of their careers. But it’s a great career, and I just encourage people that are interested in it to give it a go.

On the “death of the movie star” conversation: “Oh, I think it’s rubbish. I don’t think the question is whether or not there are any movie stars. There’s wonderful actors coming up every day. Whether or not they become movie stars is really not the point. If movies need stars, they will find them. I’ve never f–king understood being a movie star. I’m an actor. I tell stories. I’m part of a group of people who work together, collaborate on telling stories. I’m an assistant storyteller. That’s what I am.

[From GQ]

I love what he says about movie stars and the great people coming up – that was incredibly generous of him, even if I think it’s true that there are not many real “movie stars” left. He never thought of himself as a movie star though – he always wanted to be an actor, a storyteller, an artistic collaborator. Harrison’s run in the ‘90s really was unmatched – he made banger after banger, films for adults and some of the greatest dad movies of all time. The thing about Marvel films is one of the better explanations I’ve heard from an actor joining the comic-book movie ranks. He’s just like… this is what was out there, so I’m giving it a shot, maybe someone will enjoy it. I also didn’t know that America trains more foreign pilots than American pilots??

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.