Is Eugenie about to wed her (very posh) barman?
THE rumours began in the summer, grew louder in September and have now taken on an unstoppable force.
Princess Eugenie, daughter of the Duke of York and the Queen’s granddaughter, is said to be secretly engaged to her boyfriend Jack Brooksbank.
Can it be true? The growing number of clues are irresistible.
HIS AND HERS RINGS:
A photograph taken on Wednesday, of Eugenie, 26, leaving Loulou’s club in Mayfair with Jack, showed her wearing a band on her ring finger.
It did not look very much like an engagement ring, but it is intriguing that Jack, 30, wore a similar band on his left hand. Symbols of a secret lovers’ pact, perhaps?
JOINING THE INNER CIRCLE:
Jack, who has been dating Eugenie for six years, attended Chelsea Flower Show in May with the Queen and senior members of the Royal Family — a privilege granted only to the favoured inner circle.
In September, he and Eugenie were among guests at a shooting weekend hosted by Prince Harry at Balmoral.
This jaunt coincided with wild rumours that Jack had gone to see the Queen at Balmoral to ask for her beloved granddaughter’s hand in marriage.
GETTING A PROPER JOB:
Jack, who worked in the past as a waiter, and most recently was manager of the rather louche tropical-themed Mayfair nightclub Mahiki, has made concerted efforts to build a more conventional career.
Earlier this year, he left Mahiki and set up a wine merchant business, Jack Brooksbank Ltd, specialising in the ‘wholesale of wine, beer, spirits and other alcoholic beverages’. A quietly respectable business operation, much more in keeping with a man being primed to enter ‘The Firm’.
After all, he has been referred to, rather snobbishly, as ‘barman Jack’. As former air hostess Carole ‘doors to manual’ Middleton has discovered, the royals can be rather cruel when it comes to newcomers infiltrating their ranks.
And it’s hard to see the Queen giving her blessing to a marriage between a princess and a chap who pulls pints for a living.
Not that Jack is from the ‘lower orders’. His family tree is littered with earls, baronets, knights . . . and a couple of kings. He and Eugenie are, we can reveal, distantly related — something seen in aristocratic circles as highly desirable.
His father, George Brooksbank, a chartered accountant, is an Old Etonian. His great-grandfather, Sir John Spencer Coke, the son of the 2nd Earl of Leicester, held the office of Gentleman Usher to King George VI between 1938 and 1953.
Jack is distantly related to Edward III and James II of Scotland.
Yesterday the Mail asked Jack’s mother, Nicola Brooksbank, whether she would like to confirm the reports that her son may have become engaged to Eugenie. We’ve just come back from France,’ she told the Mail. ‘We haven’t seen anything. Thank you so much but we will not be commenting.’
Young Jack cuts a debonair figure and, say those who know him, has an easy and charming manner.
Indeed, the only blip is a story in a red-top tabloid in 2013 about some pictures taken at Jack’s 21st birthday party which were later posted on the internet.
The pictures purportedly showed Jack groping a stripper’s breasts while blindfolded and covered in candle wax.
After leaving the independent Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, he gave university a miss and went out to work.
He waited tables at the Admiral Codrington pub in Chelsea and The Devonshire Terrace in the City of London before moving on to Mahiki.
He met Eugenie on a skiing trip in Verbier, Switzerland, in 2010, after being introduced by friends.
For her 22nd birthday, Jack bought her a Cartier bracelet.
He gets on well with Eugenie’s parents, especially with the gregarious Duchess, it seems.
It was reported in 2012 that Fergie had to apologise to fellow diners after a party at the Osteria dell’Arancio restaurant in Chelsea to celebrate Jack’s 27th birthday.
Customers apparently complained when some guests became so raucous as they knocked back champagne that one member of the party fell off their chair.
Eugenie is a sociable young woman — her friends include supermodel Cara Delevingne, actress Sienna Miller and singer James Blunt — and she and Jack are often seen out and about, and hand-in-hand, at the best parties.
Speculation about the couple’s future began in August when a newspaper ran a report saying that Eugenie and Jack were set to marry. Her parents were said to be ‘over the moon’.
So can the nation look forward to the delights and complications of a royal wedding next year?
We already have one ‘almost royal’ wedding in the offing next spring, with the marriage of Kate’s sister Pippa to James Matthews.
But it’s looking increasingly likely there may well be a real Royal Wedding to rival it with the nuptials of Princess Eugenie and her ‘barman Jack’.