Desperately seeking Pippa
OF ALL the accusations that can be levelled against Pippa Middleton, the one that is perhaps the hardest to swallow is that she is a shy, retiring thing who should really get out more.
Yes, that Pippa. The young woman who is photographed every time she opens her front door, who in the United States is probably more famous than the Queen, and who landed a $785,000 book deal on the strength of having a famous sister and a nice bottom.
Yet, despite Middleton having risen to a point of stratospheric celebrity without ever having achieved anything of note, said anything interesting, or indeed done anything other than exist, the world has now been asked to believe she is hiding her light under a bushel.
Specifically, it has been reported that she has gone all coy on the subject of her book, which is published this week. It is called Celebrate (‘‘A year of British festivities for families and friends’’), and is a party-planning guide based on her experience working for her parents’ company, Party Pieces.
Publisher Penguin is said to have paid her an advance of $785,000. It is a decent assumption that they did not pay such a large sum because her canapes were so much tastier than anyone else’s, or because her version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey was so much more exciting. No, the advance was, obviously, for her name.
It is, then, all the more surprising that the author appears to have opted out of the publicity machine. According to reports from the US, although the big networks are clamouring to get a piece of the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister, Middleton has come over all unavailable.
She was, it is reported, offered high-profile interviews with Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey and other top names, as well as a slot on Entertainment Tonight. Yet, despite the vast sales that such exposure would generate, she appears to have turned them all down.
Lindsay Prevette, spokeswoman for Viking Press, the US publishers of Celebrate, was quoted in the New York Daily News as saying: ‘‘Pippa is not doing anything for us. She is not coming here to do interviews and is not available for anything, unfortunately.’’
One explanation, allegedly,
is that she is worried about being asked about her sister’s topless pictures. That may strain credulity. If Middleton cannot take a few boob questions in her stride, she is not the tough cookie we all took her for.
The other explanation is that she is worried about being seen to cash in on her royal connections. It would be harsh, of course, to suggest that it is too late for that now.
Perhaps her publishers believe she simply does not need to drag herself around the interview circuit. Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller magazine, suggested her invisibility was a version of the ‘‘denial marketing’’ practised by JK Rowling’s publishers, where the less people see of a book or its author, the more they want.