Aatish Taseer opens royal can of worms

London, April 28: In an explosive new article for Vanity Fair magazine, writer Aatish Taseer, 38, son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and late Pakistani politician and businessman Salmaan Taseer, has revealed several sensational details of life inside the British royal family. The revelations are based on the three years that Taseer dated Lady Gabriella Windsor, 37, daughter of the Queen’s first cousin, Prince Michael of Kent. The couple ended their relationship in 2006.

According to several agency reports, Taseer claims he and Gabriella, Ella to family and friends, “got high on Ecstasy and swam naked at Buckingham Palace”, and that Gabriella’s mother Princess Michael had two black sheep named Serena and Venus, after the African- American tennis sisters Venus and Serena Williams. More damagingly, he alleges that “royals and Nazis go together like blini and caviar... everyone above a certain age in Britain is at least a tiny bit racist.”

When Prince and Princess Michael invited him to their Kensington Palace apartment, Taseer writes he found ‘ KP’, now home to Prince William and his wife Kate, “wildly depressing”. Taseer also recalls flying with the royals on a commercial flight, separated from other passengers by a velvet rope.

However, he says his romance with Gabriella wasn’t all “schlosses, boats and stag hunts”, and that moving with the Michaels also meant “constant cutbacks and reduced circumstances”. In particular, he recalls a flight from Sardinia, when the Kents were seated in the second row of their economy plane.

At one point, the relationship seemed set to turn into marriage. However, Princess Michael was convinced royals should not tie the knot with commoners. “’ It’s all very well Ella marrying Mr Taseer from India or Pakistan,” she once said to me. “… But the moment the girl down the road thinks she can be Princess, or Queen, it’s all over…’” Mr Taseer writes.