British expert on the Royal family exposed as an all American boy
TV pundit interviewed during Harry’s wedding is a New Yorker with fake name and accent
ROYAL expert Thomas J Mace-archer-mills Esq certainly looked and sounded the part to viewers watching Prince Harry’s wedding on foreign television.
The plummy-voiced pundit, chairman of the British Monarchist Society and Foundation (BMSF), has appeared on radio and television for years, offering his views on many royal occasions.
However, it has now been reported that the 38-year-old who played on his British roots is really an Italian-american New Yorker called Tommy Muscatello.
Last month, Mr Muscatello was interviewed outside Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace by many of the television networks covering Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle.
Mr Muscatello doled out advice to the new Duchess of Sussex, telling her that she should be careful not to upstage the existing members of the Royal family “especially when you’re coming in the way you are”.
He said of the bride: “She is loud, she is American, she fights for her cause. We don’t do that here. We do things quietly with dignity.”
Mr Muscatello made so many media appearances that one commentator even described him as “the most interviewed man” on the subject of the royal wedding. Mr Muscatello then tweeted the description out to his followers. Last year, Mr Muscatello, who claimed to have spent his early years in Britain, spoke to BBC Newcastle about how he had reacted to the death of Princess Diana “as a child in Britain”.
He said: “We’re British, stiff upper lip. As a young person, and as the product of divorce, I was just sitting there thinking, ‘what are poor William and Harry going to do?’
“It was very frightening for me when I was that young as it was a Britain I did not know.” Mr Muscatello is reported to have told The Wall Street Journal, which revealed his alleged true background, that he identifies more as a Briton than an American, and that he had been obsessed with the UK as a child.
His accent, he said, came from a stint in a school production of Oliver Twist, in which he played the undertaker Mr Sowerberry.
His father, Thomas Muscatello snr, was reported as saying that as a teenager, his son had told him that he wanted to one day “move over there [Britain] and be part of what’s going on”.
The newspaper reported that Mr Muscatello said that he had constructed his surname using the “names of friends and distant relations”.
He also said that two elderly British people who are unrelated to him let him call them his grandparents.
Yesterday, in response to the newspaper article, he said: “The Wall Street Journal breached journalistic trust, omitted truths and mis-sold what the initial interview was for. Many of the facts in the article are inaccurate and The Wall Street Journal itself was given many opportunities to ensure that the article was published with the most accurate information available.
“The WSJ chose not to adhere to the facts or their integrity.”
Mr Muscatello did not respond to The Daily Telegraph’s request for further comment. The Wall Street Journal said in a statement yesterday: “We stand by our reporting.”