Dad who can’t wait for it all to be over (again)
As he polishes his SECOND big father of the bride speech, why Michael Middleton’s the...
One of the most abiding images of Michael Middleton was captured just 48 hours after the wedding of his daughter Catherine to Prince William in 2011. The fanfare was over and he was on his lawn-mower, happily cutting the grass at home in Bucklebury.
For months, the world’s attention had been on every detail of the royal wedding, and on the Middletons. Kate, greatgranddaughter of coal miners, was, after all, marrying a future king.
But who could blame this quiet-mannered man for confiding to friends afterwards: ‘Thank goodness that’s over and I’ll never have to do it again.’
So what will Michael, now nearly 68, be thinking today as he walks his younger daughter Pippa up the aisle at St Mark’s Church in englefield, Berkshire? You might discern the expression of a man who can hardly believe that all the ballyhoo is happening again.
Of course, some fathers might welcome such socially elevating scrutiny. not the man William has taken to calling ‘Mike’.
He hides his discomfort at the limelight behind a steady geniality — but one wedding of the year would have been more than enough for this grandfather, who spent the early years of his family life as an airline flight dispatcher.
That former life has its uses now, though. For while Pippa’s mother Carole is supervising the wedding planners — Fait Accompli, hired to stage the money-no-object nuptials — Michael is quietly overseeing it all. He even had the seating plan in his hand when he popped into the church to check on arrangements just the other day.
Which means it ought to run like clockwork. For in the days before he and former flight attendant Carole, 62, ran their Party Pieces empire, it was Michael’s job to make sure British Airways flights came and went smoothly.
At Heathrow, he was responsible for co-ordinating aircraft arrival and departure, managing the loading of cargo, calculating how much fuel was needed, authorising take-off and ensuring that planes were on schedule. He even had to deal with difficult passengers.
So today, with the vast glass marquee for 350 guests in the 18-acre garden of their house in the Berkshire village of Bucklebury, the luxury ‘throne room’ loos, the champagne, and £40,000-worth of beluga caviar to be kept at the right temperature, Michael will keep a professional eye on it all.
As for the so-called aeronautical display and flypast in place of fireworks, we can reveal that a solitary Spitfire will zoom overhead, courtesy of a long-time family friend who offered to do it as a free treat.
Michael, privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol, once dreamt of emulating his father, Peter, a former RAF and later commercial pilot and instructor. When he found his eyesight wasn’t good enough, he switched to ground crew, training as a dispatcher, a managerial grade.
Peter Middleton forged a royal link of his own, acting as second officer to Prince Philip when the Queen’s husband was on a twomonth air tour of South America in 1962. Sadly, he died shortly before his grand-daughter’s engagement to Philip’s grandson.
As to why there will be no fireworks today, it is because the Middletons’ property is next to a deer farm and the animals could have been startled by the flashes and bangs.
even so, it will be a very costly wedding, running well into six figures. Michael is sharing the expense with bridegroom James Matthews’s family.
Six years ago, Michael contributed £100,000 towards Kate and William’s wedding. But this was a royal affair in which all matters were out of the Middletons’ hands.
The ceremony was in Westminster Abbey, after which coaches ferried guests to Buckingham Palace, where the Prince of Wales hosted the reception in the ballroom.
Understandably, Michael Middleton was seen to be ‘rather quiet’ before making his speech, even though his new son-in-law William was observed murmuring reassuring words to him shortly before he got to his feet.
And what a speech. Guests roared with laughter as he told them how William once landed his helicopter in their garden and ‘nearly blew the roof off’. He also spoke with great warmth of how the prince fitted in so comfortably with his family and joked about the ‘awkward’ moment William asked him for Kate’s hand.
Who would have thought, within the grandeur of the palace and with senior members of the royal family listening attentively, that Mike would be bold enough to speak of ‘equality’.
As he said: ‘Today was everything I had hoped for, and I’m thrilled that equality ruled the day. everybody appears as equal and our two families joining together has been an easy process. I thank the Royal Family for welcoming us as easily as they have.’
After that, his speech today should be plain sailing.
So what will he say? no doubt he will refer to how hedge fund executive James also asked his permission before proposing to Pippa on top of a windswept mountain in the Lake District. He will commend hoteliers David and Jane Matthews for producing such a fine son who fits so well into the Middleton family.
And, of course, he will pay tribute to his own wife of 37 years, Carole, whom he met at British Airways.
Carole has waited a long time to be fully involved in every mother’s dream, the planning of a daughter’s wedding.
At Kate’s she was largely a spectator at a state occasion, the key arrangements taken off her hands. ‘Carole was so frustrated with Kate’s wedding,’ says a family member. ‘Organising your daughter’s wedding is the high point of a mother’s life. She didn’t have much to do with Kate’s, so you can imagine how she is loving being involved with Pippa’s.’
This time, she was free to create the kind of village spectacular for 33-year-old Pippa that she had enjoyed herself, though hers was on a far more modest scale.
Mike and Carole’s wedding on June 21, 1980, was just over a year before that of William’s parents, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Carole, then 25, arrived at St James The Less Church in Dorney, Buckinghamshire, in a horsedrawn carriage and was walked up the aisle by her proud father Ronald, a builder. She had four bridesmaids. Afterwards, there was dinner with a band. Their first home was a modern flat on the edge of Slough.
neither she nor Michael could have imagined where married life would take them.
His family, originally from Leeds, had been well-to-do lawyers from whom trust money passed down that is understood to have enabled the couple to send their three children to Marlborough College.
But it was Carole who came up with the idea that was to transform their fortunes.
A family friend says: ‘Carole was pregnant with Catherine and couldn’t continue working as an air hostess, so while she was at home she started making goodybags for children’s parties among her neighbours and friends.
‘It just grew and grew so much that Michael gave up his own job with the airline to work with her.’
It was Michael who cannily oversaw the set-up of the business as a private partnership rather than a limited company. As such, it does not have to declare its accounts publicly. These remain a private matter between them and HMRC.
This was arranged in 1987, when Kate was five, Pippa three and James just born, but it has turned out to be a prescient decision which has kept worldwide curiosity about their wealth at bay.
Friends say it was Michael in particular who ensured that the family kept its feet on the ground. He and Carole, who have seen business rocket since the Royal Wedding, live quietly. They give no interviews and, when they travel, tend to stay discreetly in rented chalets or friends’ villas.
They see far more of William, Kate, George and Charlotte than Charles and Camilla do.
While William has made sure they are not kept at arm’s length by his family — as has been the fate of other in-laws — the Middletons are not exactly fixtures at royal occasions. ‘Mike’s relieved by this,’ says a close family friend. ‘He likes a peaceful life.’
Indeed, no one would be surprised if, as soon as the latest wedding is over, he is spotted back on his lawn-mower once more.
At Kate’s wedding he had guests roaring with laughter Mike ‘likes a peaceful life’, not royal occasions