David Cameron’s bodyguard is in hot water for leaving a loaded gun and Cameron’s passport in an aeroplane toilet. As an ex-PM, Cameron is apparently still entitled to this sort of security detail. I kind of get that, even though nowadays he’s really nothing more than a private citizen who used to have an important job. Didn’t we all?
But what really got me with this story was the fact that the bodyguard had Cameron’s passport with him. Why? Is DC so rich and posh that he has other people to carry all his stuff at all times? Or do the security services think someone so dim they once left their own child behind in a pub couldn’t possibly be trusted to get himself to the departure gate with the right paperwork?
Any other examples of rich/posh folk being unable or unwilling to do the simple things the rest of us take for granted?
I heard a footballer (Peter Crouch?) talking about what is done for them. If they are going overseas they hand in their passports a day or more in advance. When they travel they bring only a personal toiletries bag, all other luggage, clothes etc is arranged for them.
I can understand that, with a top-level sports team plus entourage, because you are talking about 50-60 people or more. With that number, the possibility of something important being forgotten are far greater than with, say, two. One person’s fuck-up can affect the whole thing.
As for the luggage, everyone knows of someone who has flown somewhere and their luggage has gone astray. Harder to lose if it’s all together in a big freight container.
I like the thought of Abby Clancy choosing what clothes her husband should wear when he’s on a pre-season tour of South East Asia.
Although when your wife is a well known fashion model and you are a famously gawky and uncoordinated beanpole, that is pretty much to be expected.
He may be gawky, and certainly a beanpole, but he definitely isn’t uncoordinated. He was a damn good player.
His dancing suggested otherwise regarding coordination.
He didn’t make a bloody good living by dancing…
A certain blond-haired PM seems unwilling or unable to count how many children he has. Most of us could certainly do that. I, for example, have …errm two, yes two.
That you know of?
I (mis)read the ‘simple things’ as meaning the non-material experiences we have that truly enrich us, and concluded that for the most part rich people can’t and don’t do them, because if they did then becoming and sustaining financial richness wouldn’t really matter.
So did I! Go for a nice walk, read a good book, listen to a record…. the true pleasures in life can be cheap as chips.
Some people are so poor, all they have is money.
Too true
Aren’t there stories about Prince Charles having a flunkey squeezing toothpaste onto his brush, and having a range of differently-timed boiled eggs to ensure that at least one will meet with his approval? It’s no yolk, y’know.
I was going to write about that! If his toothbrush doesn’t have the toothpaste on it, ready for him, he goes berserk – roaming the palace in his undies, growling and smashing ornaments. The rest of the family make themselves scarce until he calms down.
Apparently he drops his clothes on the floor at bed time as he has someone to put them on the chair for him.
My 14 year old down to a tee.
My 16 year old too now you mention it.
So. Teenagers are rich people, but without the money.
Now you mention it there are many similarities. Massive sense of entitlement, temper tantrums, idleness, untidiness, demanding, petulant….
and no concept of how money works
Good one.
I recall there was a story about him being baffled that his toothbrush didn’t foam one morning because no one had put any toothpaste on it and he hadn’t realised that he had to. I also heard that this was apocryphal, and grew out of a true story that a flunky did put toothpaste on Charles” brush for a while after he had broken his arm playing polo.
I find Charles, generally, quite ghastly, but I do recall reading somewhere (I’m doing vague today) that he’s the one royal who always thanks his staff for folding his pyjamas/blowing his nose/wiping his arse. He felt incredibly unloved and neglected as a child, so he shows gratitude to people. Could be a load of cobblers, but in the interest of balance, etc.
My father-in-law’s brother was, before he retired, the local painter and decorator in the village next to Balmoral and did a lot of work there. He says Chaz was the only one who actually stopped for a chat.
He, unlike most of the royal party, seems to like the Cairngorms – he came to cut the ribbon on the village Highland Games last August and stayed most of the day.
I once stumbled into the village newsagents to find Margaret buying a Racing Poast and a packet of fags. On account, obvs. I should have noticed the black Land Rover outside.
Something for the weekend, Madam?
Let alone the flunky who has to let down his morning stiffy.
Princess Anne has been a secret resident for years…following on from childhood play hood she could not let go on at least a weekly basis.
Can’t remember what programme this skit was on, but Prince Charles, flapping around the kitchen, asks “Where’s the bottle opener?”
Diana; “It’s his day off”
It was also a regular joke in Eric & Ern sketches.
They’re generally not too hot on pop music, either the making of it or having knowledge of it.
(See also: working class).
You really need the middle class for that.
Prince Charles likes a bit of Leonard Cohen apparently, the later years. When a flunkey soaps him up in the shower of a morning Charles no doubt sings to himself, “give one crack and anal sex…” and the flunkey says “would you like me to do that now sir or later?”
There’s an apocryphal story about Mariah Carey doing a promotional appearance who, on seeing the ten or so steps to the stage, turned to the organiser and said ” I don’t do stairs”.
The entitled rich kids of Knightsbridge who park their supercars wherever they want, as tickets, however hefty, are pennies to them.
I read a story about a retiring Premiership footballer who was absolutely lost without his agent/flunky etc. Bills went unpaid, didn’t know how to work the washing machine etc etc.
To be fair to Mariah, I wouldn’t do stairs in those heels either.
A friend of mine (a recording engineer) was working in the same studio complex as Mariah on one occasion. If she needed the bathroom the whole rest of the place had to be evacuated.
That’s actually very considerate of Mariah although she could just tell everyone to give it ten minutes.
When she farts it’s like when she sings. Why pump one note when half a dozen will do.
“Ooh, where’s the lav – me melisma’s playing up summat terrible today!”
My late Uncle taught PC how to lay a hedge, and swapped Christmas cards with PC and C every year up to his (sadly untimely) death.
So PC can also do things that most people can’t.
I used to get Christmas cards from Chuck, as an employee of one of his favoured charities.
That was a very confusing post while I was thinking that PC was Peter Crouch!
On an organised birding trip to India a few years back and our group was one person short. He caught up with us a week into the trip, a rich American who had turned up on time at the airport and, as he was en-route to India was asked if he had a visa for his trip, “Of course” he said and pulled out his credit card, “No sir your Indian visa”, “It is a Visa” he said pointing at the logo on the card.
Upshot was that he spent the next two or three days at the Indian consulate in New York until a visa was fast-tracked for him. Had that been me I would have been so embarrassed by the story that I would never have mentioned it to a living soul, he had no such hang ups and told anyone who would listen how the information provided by the organising company was not specific about what it meant by an Indian visa.
It’s not just rich people.
My 16-y-o continues to pile rubbish on top of the kitchen bin when it is full. She has seen me emptying it into the wheely bin outside, but is incapable of doing it herself. I’m not sure she could operate the washing machine, either.
For the record… I am solvent, but not rich.
I live in a house like that.
“Will this fit in the bin? Maybe if I just push the stuff in there down a bit more it will be OK”
And the later I am informed that the bin needs emptying.
(Step Daughter is 24, and Mrs D is 47 – it’s not an age thing, I think it’s just seen as “his job”)
My kids, 16 & 19, work on the basis of if nobody saw them put anything in the already full bin, they don’t have to empty it.
What’s worse is, when the squashed contents springs back up, the lid then gets jammed, thus making removing the bin from the cupboard under the sink almost impossible without removing the last thing added.
I am pleased I had kids but , at the moment, not very often.
I emptied the bin this morning.
Whilst emptying half the contents into a second bag so I could extract the full bag, I took solace in the fact that I am not the only one doing this.
It reminds me of a TV item, probably 40 years or so ago. The Queen Mother was opening a supermarket and was talking with the owner, saying things like – “sew…you bring your item and place it hyerr…?”. One of my family said that she’d probably never been to one before and she was genuinely asking how to buy things in a supermarket.
Just going back to the OP, I am reminded of Ted Heath saying that Thatcher was the only former PM to have armed police protection with her at all times – because she was the only one that needed it.
Could you imagine Theresa May or one of those other Droids attracting much more than indifference?