Council Caro Middleton - Annus Horribilis

Carole’s birthday: All thoughts in the Middleton household will be on their daughter, Catherine, as she continues her recovery from abdominal surgery. And that will apply even today, the birthday of Carole Middleton. In previous years, she has celebrated abroad – and memorably so for her 60th, which she spent on the private Caribbean island of Mustique with pink champagne, grenadine cocktails, a jazz band and fireworks. Today’s 69th birthday will be a quieter affair, and not just because the eldest of her three children, the Princess of Wales, has been unwell.



Annus horribilis: For the past 12 months have been something of an annus horribilis for the Middletons, and Carole in particular. Kate’s mother has only been seen in public once since her business Party Pieces collapsed last June owing £2.6 million. That was at her daughter’s Together at Christmas Carol Service at Westminster Abbey before Christmas. Carole avoided the Wimbledon tennis championships and Royal Ascot, both regular fixtures in her diary.



Party Pieces went bust: In May, Prince William’s in-laws were given pride of place at the Coronation, seated in row seven of Westminster Abbey, immediately behind the Royal family and next to world leaders.But it all exploded the following month when it was announced that her company had fallen into administration with debts of £2.6 million, misery compounded by a malicious campaign seemingly from embittered creditors, a cruel depiction in the Netflix series The Crown, and her daughter’s surgery.



The Middletons’ debt: While Party Pieces was bought for £180,000 by entrepreneur James Sinclair, who describes himself as the ‘Millionaire Clown’, there was no money to pay the creditors. Not only did the company owe the taxman £613,000 in unpaid VAT, and RBS £219,000 for a Covid loan, a string of family businesses was left out of pocket with some £456,000 due. Disgruntled supplier Sultani Gas, which was owned more than £20,430 by Party Pieces for helium for balloons, accused Carole of ‘betrayal’. ‘What hurt me the most was that I trusted her as the mother-in-law of the future King,’ a spokesman said, ‘and she just betrayed me. It is absolutely unacceptable.’ The firm’s landlord, Lord Iliffe, on whose Yattendon estate the company was based, was also owed £57,480 in unpaid rent and faced ‘severe financial consequences’. Other creditors, according to the report, included Portuguese gas canister maker Amtrol Alfa, which was owed £82,872, and party decorations firm Ginger Ray, due £52,304.



Carole’s portrayal in The Crown: The latest – and final – series of the Netflix blockbuster The Crown, hardly helped. Carole was lampooned and portrayed as an ambitious match maker who had engineered the marriage between William and Kate. Speaking on an episode of the hit Mail podcast, The Crown: Fact or Fiction, her brother Gary Goldsmith attacked the show for misrepresenting his family. ‘Carole isn’t that manipulative evil person, coming up with ways by which she can force her way into the Royal Family,’ he said. ‘First and foremost, Kate did brilliantly well to get into St Andrews. She’s an amazing girl, but that wasn’t noted. It was all to do with: “Kate you’ve got to be doing these things, you’ve got to be showing your legs”. It’s just not my family. It’s not the way Carole operates.’



How the Middletons will spend the day: It is not known whether Kate, 42, will be well enough to see her parents or her siblings Pippa Matthews, 40, and James Middleton, 36 today. While in other circumstances, Mike and Carole would celebrate abroad or perhaps at their £4.7 million Grade II listed home in Berkshire, for the moment they have cleared their diaries to help Prince William look after their three grandchildren George, ten, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five. The princess is expected to recover at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Great Park, which is a 40-minute drive from her parents.