Butler & Wilson: the cheapies Diana loved
FINDING herself with a rare afternoon to spare, Diana would ask her driver to take her to Fulham Road. There, she donned a baseball cap and sunglasses to dodge the paparazzi and snuck into Butler & Wilson, West London’s finest purveyor of costume jewellery — and the Princess’s guilty pleasure.
Diana first discovered the shop, run by flamboyant Glaswegian Simon Wilson, in 1984 when she spotted something she liked in the window.
After that, she used to pop in every few months.
‘She wasn’t grand. She just came in with a single bodyguard and behaved like a normal customer,’ explains Simon today.
‘The bodyguard would stand in the corner and she would go and look at the earrings and hold them up to herself in the mirror and say to the other customers, “What do you think? Do you like these?”
‘Some of them nearly fainted when they saw it was her.’
He adds: ‘She used costume jewels to customise her clothes and to add wit and individuality to her wardrobe.’
The faux-pearl heart earrings pictured on the cover of this pullout were her first Butler & Wilson pieces.
‘They were very girly, very youthful,’ says Simon. ‘It gave her a kick that they were fake.’ But Diana wasn’t the only royal customer. Astonishingly, the avant-garde military-style star brooch (left) was bought for Diana by Charles, who picked it up at a Butler & Wilson concession in Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago in 1986.
Diana waited just a month before debuting the £48 token, boldly pinned to the centre of her Murray Arbeid dress.
Another Butler & Wilson purchase, slithering up the left lapel of her black Jasper Conran tuxedo, was a black bead and gemstone snake (top left), which looked the epitome of Eighties bling as the Princess stepped out at a rock concert in 1986.
And the Princess really fooled royal-watchers with her crescentshaped earrings (above centre), first worn in Saudi Arabia in 1986. The press assumed them to be real gold and diamonds; a gift from her generous host.
But the jewels were Butler & Wilson paste and cost just £23.
Diana’s striking monochrome necklace (top right), was another classic from the Fulham Road shop, comprising star-shaped white beads interspersed with onxy-lookalike paste gems.
As was the dazzling starbust clip (above right), which kept her elegant chignon in place and seemed perfectly co-ordinated with her diamond ‘tennis’ necklace. Worn to a fashion show in Sydney, Australia, in 1988, the piece was pure diamante.
the singer’s funeral — perhaps even dressed as a pall-bearer.
In fact, on the day Jackson was buried, his once constant companion was 3,000 miles away in Florida, sitting in a tree listening to what animal park staff described as ‘calming flute music’. They said he wasn’t invited to the funeral. That it was a good thing, as it was better he wasn’t plunged back into the showbiz world.
Other rumours suggested that Jackson left money in his will for Bubbles. But the sanctuary said: ‘Michael always maintained ownership of Bubbles as he was his first and favourite chimpanzee, and he considered him as his son.
‘But he didn’t include him in his will. We still must raise funds from our supporters to provide care for Bubbles.’
However, Ms Ragan now says Jackson’s multi-million dollar estate has since helped out — though it pays less than half of his annual €14,000 upkeep.
She says she has deliberately never shown Bubbles any photos of Jackson, fearing how he might react. She worries that the memory might make him depressed. This fear is supported by chimp experts in view of the fact that Jackson was the ape’s ‘mother figure’.
But perhaps it might set off bad memories for other reasons. For there have been persistent claims over the years that Bubbles was abused during the Jackson years.
The respected primatologist Jane Goodall visited Neverland and has said the chimp was beaten, although she never accused Jackson of doing it himself.
Yet La Toya’s ex-husband, Jack Gordon, alleged he once saw the singer ‘punch Bubbles in the face, kick him in the stomach’.
He added: ‘Michael used to say: “He doesn’t feel it. He’s a chimpanzee. I have to discipline him.” ’
And the singer Sheryl Crow recalled that, while performing on Jackson’s 1987 BAD tour, she saw him poke the chimp with a ballpoint pen when he occasionally got out of control.
Although Ms Ragan abhors apes being kept as pets, she says there is no sign Bubbles was ever abused. ‘I wasn’t there, but think he was very much loved because he has a very sweet nature,’ she says.
Despite all the fuss they used to make of Bubbles, surviving members of the Jackson family have only once bothered to visit him in Florida. In 2010, less than a year after her brother’s death, La Toya went, for a TV documentary.
Embarrassingly, in front of the cameras, she broke down in tears, wailing: ‘I want to kiss and hug you, but I know I can’t because you’re so huge.’
She tried to coax a reaction out of him, saying through a metal fence: ‘Hi Bubbles, do you remember me?’
They had last seen each other 20 years previously and he did not react. At least he didn’t spit water at her.
The encounter was reminiscent of the days when Michael had wanted to make Bubbles speak and asked doctors if it was possible to give him an operation to alter his vocal cords. The star wanted to know what his best friend was really thinking.
If they could converse now, however, one wonders whether the long-suffering chimp would have many kind words or thoughts for the man who turned him into a showbusiness clown.