Kate turns 30 today

Royal family insists occasion will be ‘low key and private’

LONDON: Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, turns 30 today after a near-faultless nine months of lowkey royal engagements as she makes a gentle entrance into royal life alongside her husband Prince William.

The tabloids are full of rumours that Williams’s party-loving brother Prince Harry and Catherine’s highprofile younger sister Pippa Middleton are preparing a birthday party for the woman who will one day be queen.

But the royal family insists the occasion will be “low-key and private”.

Regardless of the glitz or otherwise of the party, as she enters her

She is, like Prince William, tip-toeing towards her destiny. — PETER HUNT

fourth decade the former commoner Kate Middleton – most Britons still call her simply “Kate” – has already become a global icon.

Her wedding to the second-in-line to the throne last April was watched by an estimated two billion TV viewers and her face has adorned millions of magazine covers.

Every one of her outfits is pored over and the clothes invariably become instant best-sellers.

Meanwhile, celebrity magazines scrutinise every photograph looking for evidence of a baby bump, but she is not pregnant yet, and the pressure will inevitably build from a hungry press as time goes on.

Catherine lives far from the bright lights and long lenses of London in Anglesey, north Wales, where William is training to be a Royal Air Force rescue pilot, and her public appearances are infrequent and carefully controlled.

As BBC royal correspondent Peter Huntsaid:“sheis, like Prince William, still tiptoeing towards her destiny.”

Since the wedding, she has performed just 15 or so official engagements in Britain and a tour with William of Canada and California – a tiny number of appearances compared to other members of the royal family.

If she is rarely seen, she is heard even less. Catherine does not, yet, make speeches.

Yet she enjoys huge popularity and those members of the public who have met her report that she is happy to chat and say that the daughter of a former pilot and flight assistant is without airs and graces. — AFP