Your £50k bill to guard young royals partying on streets of Memphis
FOR the royal cousins, it was a chance to sample the lively nightlife of Memphis, Tennessee.
Princes William and Harry and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, in town for a friend’s wedding, dined with other guests at a barbecue restaurant where the owner later said: ‘Seems to me a lot of the British like Jack Daniel’s!’
Young father William and newly single Harry headed off at a relatively sober 11pm, leaving the girls to party into the early hours at an outdoor bar.
Clearly in good spirits, Beatrice, 25, danced on a table, and could also be seen with her 24-year-old sister and other members of the wedding party drinking from plastic glasses which read: ‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish.’
Yesterday the four royals and other wedding guests even got to visit Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley.
A staff member at the visitor attraction, which was closed to the public, said: ‘It is pretty special to have a future king take time to come to visit The King.’
All good fun, but questions are already being asked about the price of keeping them safe, put at £50,000.
Although the cost of the trip itself is being met privately by the princes, they are accompanied round-the-clock by a team of around eight taxpayer-funded officers from Scotland Yard’s Royalty Protection Squad.
Some of those will have travelled to Memphis in advance to ‘ recce’ the private residence where they are staying and the wedding venue. Others travelled with the brothers personally.
One senior industry source estimated the cost of guarding the princes during their five-day trip would be in the region of £50,000, including business class flights and hotels for all of the officers.
But retired chief superintendent Dai Davies, former Head of Royal Protection, said: ‘ William is a future king and his brother is fourth in line to the throne and serving member of the military which does, unfortunately, make them a major security risk. If we accept that we need to protect them 24 hours a day then that protection will, by necessity, extend to trips such as this.’
The royals are in Memphis for today’s wedding of nightclub owner Guy Pelly.
Harry, 29, arrived from Miami – where he had partied in one of the city’s flashiest clubs – on a private jet, believed to have been provided by Mr Pelly’s fiancee, Holiday Inn heiress Lizzy Wilson.
A convoy of black SUVs, provided by the Tennessee state department, took him to the private residence where he is staying with William, 31, who arrived on a commercial flight.
Their first public appearance was when they joined Mr Pelly and his bride-to-be at a dinner for 173 guests at Charles Vergos Rendezvous.
The motorcade of seven blackedout vehicles and two police cars that accompanied them quickly attracted a crowd of more than 300 onlookers who peered into the diner to get a glimpse of its royal guests.
Owner John Vergo said afterwards that the party ate barbecued ribs, shoulder, brisket and chicken washed down with beer, wine and whisky, adding: ‘ Seems to me a lot of the British like Jack Daniel’s!’
Outside student Meghan Riley, 22, said she was hoping to marry Harry, who split from his girlfriend of two years, Cressida Bonas, days before he flew out.
She said: ‘He’s so handsome and rich and a really nice guy. I would love to be a princess.’
Shortly after 11pm the brothers left and headed off in separate vehicles, while Beatrice, Eugenie and the rest of the group descended on neonlit Beale Street, the city’s historical centre lined with blues clubs.
Cancel the confetti. Put away the bunting. cressida and Harry have broken it off, crushing mounting hopes of another Royal Wedding. Some speculated it was because cressie was too needy. Others said the couple rowed over money. But friends say that overshadowing it all was Harry’s first love, chelsy Davy, whose own flourishing new relationship made him uneasy about his feelings.
Me? I reckon it wasn’t chelsy who was the spectre at the royal romantic feast, but Kate.
Surely it’s no coincidence that the split came so soon after two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of Kate, William and baby George’s tour of australia and new Zealand.
Kate did a fine job Down Under — the perma- smile, the knee-length middle- aged frocks, the perfectly tousled hair and Dynasty make-up.
and, of course, the bonny baby on her hip.
Here was the modern-day royal wife at work — as perfect as a Disney princess, and, dare I say it, as bland. For cressie it must have offered a terrifying vision of her future.
It’s not simply that, as Harry’s wife, she would for ever be compared to Kate. Who was the more fashionable, the more dutiful, the better mother?
It’s that she could see from Kate’s example that the ‘ fairytale’ royal existence is anything but.
Indeed, for any normal young woman, with her own identity and aspirations, royal life must seem stultifying.
certainly, it would be hard to find two girls more different than cressie and Kate.
From the moment the then Miss Middleton met Prince William at university, all she ever wanted was to be his wife — encouraged onwards by her socially ambitious mother, carole.
Kate never held down a proper fulltime job; never lived anywhere except in her parents’ homes; never sought financial or emotional independence.
cressie, on the other hand, left dance college and immediately got a £20,000 job with a theatre marketing company in Soho to be self-sufficient.
She moved into a modest flat in Shepherd’s Bush, which she rents with a friend. and she still harbours dreams of dancing professionally — dreams that would have become impossible if she’d married into the Firm.
not for cressie a life of walking two steps behind her Prince, fawning over his every word, traipsing around cutting ribbons and shaking hands with strangers.
She’s far more at home in old jeans and a pair of converse trainers than in alexander McQueen couture and l. K. Bennett heels.
no, far from being too needy for Harry, I suspect cressie wasn’t nearly needy enough. and frankly, what modern woman could blame her?