WHO'S POSHEST (AND PUSHIEST)?
It’ll be a tantalising sideshow to Pippa’s wedding — the battle between two equally formidable and socially ambitious mothers
BOTH are sleek brunettes, with trim figures that belie their age. Both have used their fearsome determination to ascend the social ladder to its peak — earning their respective families a fortune. But despite their striking similarities, one question remains unanswered.
Will Carole Middleton and Pippa’s future mother-in-law Jane Matthews get on?
For while there’s certainly some common ground between the pair, there’s more than a few stumbling blocks on the path to familial bliss — namely, who’s earned the right to be known as the poshest mum?
And how will ferociously competitive Carole ensure she wins the fashion battle on the Big Day itself? CATHERINE OSTLER reveals all...
AIR HOSTESS AND THE CARNIVAL QUEEN
THE rise of Carole Middleton (nee Goldsmith) to mother-in-law to royalty is well told. Born in 1955 in Perivale, London, she’s the daughter of a one-time shop assistant and a lorry driver turned haulage contractor. Her grandfather was an ex-miner from Durham who lived in a council flat. After a stint as an air hostess for British Airways where she met husband Michael, she set up the family party-planning business, Party Pieces, from her kitchen table. It made the Middletons multi-millionaires.
Jane Matthews, or Jane Spencer Parker as she was, has a rather more prestigious family tree. the 69-year-old was born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Her family lived the kind of cocktails-on-the-verandah life Carole could only dream of as she pushed her trolley down the aisles.
Jane’s father, Robert Spencer ‘Spenny’ Parker, was a sports-mad architect who designed Harare’s imposing High Court and central library. He played rugby, founded a cricket club and loved a drink — so much so that Jane’s namesake and youngest son, the party boy Spencer, of Made In Chelsea television show fame, believes he is Spenny reincarnated.
Sporty, glamorous and bohemian, Jane was a catch. Aged 18, while studying Fine Art at Rhodes University in South Africa, she was voted carnival queen. After inheriting her father’s passion for sport, she became good at tennis.
Her move to London in the late Sixties, aged 21, was a last minute decision which altered the course of her life. Originally intending to go to Holland, on a scholarship to study at the Rijksmuseum, her boat stopped in London.
She decided to stay, living in a flat in Earls Court and working as a receptionist at Christian Dior. She soon met her future husband, Dave Matthews, and they had three children, Pippa’s beau James, Michael — who tragically died in 1999 aged 22 on the descent from Everest after becoming the youngest Briton to conquer it — and Spencer.
PETROL HEAD AND THE CO-PILOT
WHAT Jane and Carole do have in common is a strong belief in the importance of family — both the Middletons and Matthews are loyal, tight-knit clans.
And that’s in part thanks to the stability of their respective patriarchs — the amiable Michael Middleton, 67, Carole’s co-pilot at Party Pieces, and Dave Matthews, 73, who owns the glamorous St Bart’s hotel Eden Rock with his wife. Both women’s marriages, too, are happy and enduring.
But that’s where the similarities rather end. Because Dave Matthews couldn’t be more different to dear old uncontroversial Mike Middleton.
Born near Rotherham, Dave ‘the Band’ Matthews (nicknamed after American rockers, Dave Matthews Band), has had a life worthy of a Hollywood film. His parents were Eunice and Wallace, a former miner who ended up owning a garage.
Dave’s career started with a stint working for his father as a mechanic and time spent at Sheffield technical College, before selling cars door to door.
A petrol head at heart, he became a racing driver until a terrible accident at Silverstone in 1973 — in which his heart stopped, his left eye was damaged and a driver was killed — ended his days on the track.
Instead, he worked his way up the motor industry, running a luxury coach manufacturer in Scarborough and transforming it into an outfit called Henlys, which was briefly in the UK’s top 500 companies.
His love-life, too, was exciting. He married a beautiful female racing driver called Anita taylor in the Sixties and they had a daughter, Nina. the marriage, sadly, didn’t last.
Single and living alone, one day he found himself browsing through his sister-in-law’s university yearbook — and saw a picture of Jane, a fellow student, as Carnival Queen on a float with two hand-maidens.
He was instantly smitten — and phoned Jane to ask for a date. When she asked what he looked like, he jokingly said he had red hair and glasses. Jane turned him down.
She soon changed her mind when Dave turned up at her house in his Ferrari Daytona. they married in the early Seventies.
In 1991, Dave moved into property development and, four years later, he and Jane bought the dilapidated Eden Rock hotel in St Bart’s, former holiday location of celebrities from Greta Garbo to Howard Hughes. the Matthews moved their family from London to the Caribbean for, as Dave describes it, ‘a more adventurous life’.
they got that adventure — two days after moving into the rundown hotel a category four hurricane struck the island, leaving the family sheltering under concrete sinks in the old kitchen.
they were forced to use bed frames and suitcases to reinforce the old doors and windows against the gale. It paid off — and today the Matthews family has transformed Eden Rock into one of the most desirable hotels in the world, and an exclusive celebrity hotspot.
CELEBRITY PARTIES OR DISCREET DOS
WHILE both women are very much social animals, their style is very different. Carole — who, of course, manages parties for a living — is organised and meticulous. It’s not unusual for her gatherings to be themed, and every last detail is thought of — from the scented candles to the fold of the napkins.
Carole is determined to be tasteful and ‘proper’ — understandable, perhaps, for a newcomer to high society. this same caution rules the rest of her life, too. Friends are discreet, and not in the public eye. Holidays are taken in ‘safe’ locations like Mustique and the Alps, days out to tennis at Wimbledon and shopping trips to Sloane Square. She and Mike ensure they regularly attend church at Sandringham, too. All in all, Carole is steadfast in her wish to avoid embarrassing Kate — and lives her life accordingly. Jane, on the other hand, is less Sloane good taste, more rock chick.
Spontaneity is key for the Matthews
clan — just take her wedding as an example. No big white dress for Jane. Dave surprised her by arranging a ceremony at Rotherham Register Office and she was wearing an old brown sweater and skirt.
But she made up for it with a wild wedding party in Rhodesia later, at which her father turned up two hours late on a donkey.
And it’s this eclectic spirit that permeates the family’s hotel at Eden Rock, where arty Jane’s paintings decorate every wall.
Celebrities flock there, attracted by the privacy and luxury. One of the hotel’s two villas is dubbed ‘Villa Rockstar’, and has its own recording studio, with the mixing console John Lennon used to record ‘Imagine’.
And so, as well as entertaining old friends like the northern industrialist Kevin McDonald and yachtsman Alex Lees-Buckley, among those in Jane’s social whirl are oligarch Roman Abramovich, who has a £49m home on St Barts and is a regular for lunch at Eden Rock with his glamorous wife Dasha Zhukova.
Other celebrities she has welcomed to the island include Beyonce, Elton John, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg, Daniel Craig, Mariah Carey, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez and P Diddy.
Indeed, P Diddy was so enamoured with the Matthews family that he taught a young Spencer to play backgammon. With a little black book like Jane’s, who needs royalty?
BOHO, BOTOX . . . AND BALMORAL
WITH a super-smooth brow and chiselled cheekbones, Jane looks more like a woman in her early 50s than 69. Compare her complexion to the younger Carole’s and you’ll notice that, while there’s eight years between them, Carole looks older.
Presumably though, even if she wanted a frozen, Botoxed brow, it wouldn’t be quite the done thing for gatherings at Balmoral.
Jane has none of the same proprieties to hold her back. Similarly in matters of fashion, Jane is flashier and edgier, than cautious Carole who is more Peter Jones and suitable Chelsea boutiques than the Missoni prints, ponchos and white trouser suits favoured by Jane. One wonders what Carole, who prides herself on her family’s rise to tasteful splendour, makes of Jane’s, shall we say, exuberant style.
WHO HAS BAGGED MOST MANSIONS?
NOBODY can say Carole hasn’t done well in life — clambering from a simple semi outside Reading to owning an historic Grade II-listed Georgian manor house set in 18 acres with a pool and tennis court, as well as the smart apartment in Chelsea where all three of her children have lived at one time.
But Jane Matthews’ property portfolio is even more impressive. She and Dave have made their way from their first house, a bungalow called Lakeside, at Lindrick Dale in Yorkshire, to luxury homes dotted around the world.
their first jump up the ladder came in 1986, when after a few years of marriage and two sons, they bought elegant Caunton Manor, an 18th-century house outside Grantham, Lincs, set in 30 acres of grounds.
tasteful, it perhaps wasn’t — there was a dance floor that revealed a pool underneath at the flick of a switch. But it was relatively idyllic too — with glass-houses, trout pond, pony paddocks, chickens, dogs, sheep, pigs and, of course, a go-karting track.
But nomadic Dave soon got itchy feet. By 1994, he’d sold up and moved the family — by this time just Jane and youngest son Spencer, then aged six, the older two stayed in the UK boarding at Uppingham public school — to a rented flat on the Ile St Louis in Paris. From there, they all moved to Eden Rock.
But a blingtastic five-star hotel wasn’t enough for Jane. Five years ago, she and Dave bought the 10,000-acre Glen Affric sporting estate, in Invernesshire, which has a Victorian lodge available to rent. the couple also own a fabulous apartment in Monaco.
DRUGS, SEX AND FAMILY SCANDAL
EVERY family has one. But Carole and Jane have dealt with their black sheep in different ways. the Middletons’ embarrassment is undoubtedly Carole’s little brother Gary, who was photographed taking cocaine by a tabloid newspaper.
Shaven headed, with a penchant for diamante-studded suits, he’s on his fourth wife.
Carole was humiliated by his drug taking but he redeemed himself in time to attend the Royal Wedding in 2011. But all was still not well. Kate’s cousin Joanne Callen gave an interview in 2014 describing how Carole thought she was ‘even grander than the Queen’.
She said: ‘Carole doesn’t reply to invitations and doesn’t turn up at any family events. She claims that she won’t go anywhere where Gary is but I think she is just making excuses.
‘the real reason is that she’s above us now. We’re not in her social circle. It’s as if we are not good enough now and she’s embarrassed by us.’
Jane has her own black sheep, her youngest son reality tV star Spencer, who’s boasted of sleeping with 1,000 women, taking cocaine and having a ‘sixsome’ in St Bart’s with some Canadians.
When he was recently exposed for taking steroids, Jane and Dave remained ‘tribally loyal’ to their son, refusing to respond to requests for interviews.
LEARNING FROM CAROLE’S BLIPS
CAROLE may have the fresh polish and royal connections, but there’s no doubt Jane’s probably the richer and more jet set of the pair.
According to Palace gossip, Carole suffered some early blips like the socalled ‘toiletgate’ affair, when she is said to have said ‘toilet’ instead of ‘loo’, and introduced herself by saying ‘pleased to meet you’ instead of ‘how do you do’.
And, of course, she chewed gum at Prince William’s Passing Out parade at Sandhurst, which attracted much mockery.
however, since those early errors, Carole’s redeemed herself, and has become a model of quiet country elegance. Gone are her short skirts and colourful outfits. Instead, she almost looks comfortable when, say, sat in a horse and carriage for the Royal procession at Ascot.
there have also been some murmurings about Jane’s rather naff style — money might buy you bling, but it can’t always buy you taste, some whisper.
Perhaps Carole will offer Jane a few gentle pointers on how to adopt a touch of class . . .