Sheikh, Prattle & Troll

‘IT’S very hard to like Princess Michael of Kent. So hard that most of us gave up trying years ago. It’s far easier to dislike her.

‘Buy my house or I vill eat ze kat’

And that’s good, because it makes the Sun’s news of how she spoke her mind to the News of the World’s “fake sheikh” all the more enjoyable.

Mazher Mahmood has made a name for himself posing as a wealthy Arab, notably engineering a meeting with Sophie, Countess of Wessex, who was consequentially accused of abusing her royal connections as head of her PR firm R-JH – from which she later resigned as chairman.

Now he’s exposed another royal, although since it’s the charmless Princess Michael the real shock would be less to find out she is pushy and fond of money than it would be to discover how she’s extremely warm, generous to a fault and thinking of living out her days on a kibbutz.

But to the story, and it’s that the sheikh arrived at the Princess’s estate in Gloucestershire in the pretence of being an interested buyer.

In the course of the tour, Princess Michael described Princess Diana as “bitter”, nasty” and “strange”. She said Prince Charles never loved her and had merely “married a womb”.

She also told the fake sheikh that Camilla will one day be Queen. And on the Sun’s infamous picture of Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform, she says: “He will never live it down. But I believe if he had been wearing the hammer and sickle there wouldn’t have been so much fuss.”

So says the former Baroness Marie-Christine Hedwig Agnes Ida von Reibnitz, whose father, the Express casually reminds us, was an “aristocratic German army officer who was revealed to have been a member, albeit in ‘nominal’ terms, of Hitler’s SS.”

But how does such a woman sell a house? Thankfully, with the housing market in the doldrums, the Mail gives its readers a few pointers on the way “The Del Boy Princess” does things.

She offered to throw in tea services and all the bed linen if the sheikh bought the £6million house. She also offered her services for hire.

She’s a great writer – “hugely successful in France”, don’t yer know. And even does a good stand-up routine. “It’s a one-hour, one-woman show but I’m very good, as you can imagine,” says she.

“I don’t usually discuss fees. But it’s £25,000 to speak. Is that not enough? Shall I do more? And expenses?”

And if that’s not enough (“I’m robbing meself I tells yer”), what about a white tiger. Very good runner. Used to belong to Siegfried and Roy, who use the beasts in their Las Vegas magic shows. “They sell them, you know,” says the Princess. “I can introduce you to them easily.”

But can she do any tricks. Like placing her head in one of the tiger’s mouth? Or disappearing in puff of yellow smoke? And what about the ping-pong balls..?’

Posted: 5th, September 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink