Director quits after ex-valet Fawcett joins Charles’ firm

Afew months ago, Michael fawcett cemented his place next to the heir to the throne by being made a director of Prince Charles’s company, A. G. Carrick Ltd.

And the arrival of the controversial former valet, who is said to have squeezed the royal toothpaste on to HRH’s brush, has been followed by more significant changes at the firm.

Documents filed at Companies House disclose that James furse has ushered himself out of the door and resigned last month as chair and director.

furse, 56, spent seven years working on a part-time basis and remains a trustee of two charities founded by the Prince of wales.

Prince Charles set up A. G. Carrick to sell goods such as £60 corgi toys and £ 65 cushions emblazoned with the motto God Save The Queen at his Highgrove shops. fawcett’s occupation is listed as ‘events manager’.

A. G. Carrick is named after the pseudonym the Prince uses to sign his watercolours. It recorded a turnover of £5 million for the year ending March 31, 2017.

fawcett, 55, resigned not once but twice from the Royal Household. In 1998, when a number of the Prince’s staff complained to Charles of fawcett’s bullying attitude, he duly resigned. But, within a week, he was not only reinstated, but promoted. In 2003, he was forced out as a senior valet when an inquiry found he had sold off gifts on Charles’s orders. Yet he was retained as a highly paid ‘consultant’. In January, I revealed that, in the financial year ending last March, the Dumfries House Trust, a charity set up to run Charles’s Palladian pile in Ayrshire, paid fawcett’s business, Premier Mode Limited, £276,158. The heir to the throne used £90,000 from his Prince of wales Charitable foundation to cover the cost of fawcett’s £85,000-peryear salary as executive director of Dumfries House.

As well as fawcett’s generous salary, Dumfries paid his company £72,000 for consultancy services and £119,158 for ‘event delivery’.

Cash was even found for fawcett’s son Oliver: his firm was paid £1,770 for producing a short film ‘covering live build events on the estate during the year’.

A Dumfries House Trust spokesman said a ‘significant proportion’ of the payments went to ‘thirdparty suppliers of services’.

fawcett was previously a director of A. G. Carrick, but left in 2013.