Don’t touch me — I’m English! India Hicks’s gym warning
THE playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked that Britain and the United States were two countries separated by a common language, but has a new division emerged?
Princess Diana’s bridesmaid India Hicks was left extremely annoyed during a visit to America this weekend when a fellow gym-goer touched her in a friendly way.
Although the granddaughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma does not suggest there was anything sexual intended by his gesture, which happened during a spin class at the gym in Miami, Florida, it nevertheless irritated her greatly.
Describing his behaviour as ‘weird’, India says the ‘dude next to me on the cycle’ was ‘tapping my arm every so often, in a compassionate “we-can-do-it” sort of way’.
Sharing her thoughts on a blog, the 50-year-old fashion designer declares: ‘I did not want to be tapped compassionately at my sweatiest moment.
‘I’m English for heaven’s sake. We hardly hug our mothers.’
India is the daughter of the celebrated late interior designer David Hicks and Lady Pamela Hicks, 88, who is a first cousin of Prince Philip and was one of the Queen’s bridesmaids at her wedding in 1947.
The former model’s comments are fascinating because India is no stiff aristocrat, despite her noble lineage. Expelled from Gordonstoun school in Scotland, alma mater of her godparent Prince Charles, for entertaining boys in her room, India spent holidays at her father’s self-built home in the Bahamas. She still lives a bohemian existence there with her long-term boyfriend, David Flint Wood, and their four children.
Last summer, India burnished her offbeat image by turning up at Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece’s black-tie 21st birthday party in the Cotswolds topless beneath her tuxedo. Instead of a white dress shirt, she had her naked chest sprayed with white body paint. A make-up artist even added a bow tie to complete the effect.
She explained: ‘They asked us to revolutionise our black tie.’