Gail Walker: Why so sexy Chelsy would make a right royal bride

Gail Walker

Gail Walker, Belfast Telegraph

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This coming weekend's nuptials between Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly have given the tabloids - and the rest of us, too - a good excuse to cast an eye over the current crop of royal girlfriends. Kelly, a former Catholic, has converted to Anglicanism, presumably in a bid to keep her prospective royal in-laws sweet, but even that's not enough for the more curtain-twitching elements of the Press.

'Just what will the Queen make of the wilder antics of some of Autumn's relatives?' asked the Daily Mail, before devoting several thousand words to answering its own question on Her Majesty's behalf. So what if one of Kelly's uncles has worked in the adult entertainment industry. Given HM's own family's 'wild antics' — ex-porn star lovers, toe-sucking lovers, her eldest son's marital indiscretions, fake sheiks, etc — I don't think she'll would lose too much sleep over the Kellys' activities. But Autumn is now regarded as fair game since she and her fiance took the Hello! shilling. And her working class background is a nice big stick to beat her with, too — once, that is, they've finished using it on the increasingly skinny flanks of Prince William's 'commoner' bride-in-waiting, Kate Middleton.

Still, there is a difference — Kate could one day be Queen, while Autumn would need a bloody coup worthy of the Nepalese royal family to get within a beagle's gowl of the throne.

Which begs the question why she had to convert at all? Can't the pair just marry because they love each other for who they are and leave it at that?

Perhaps I'm being unfair, but neither strike me as particularly devout-minded individuals anyway, given Peter Phillip's epic stag festivities in the Isle of Wight and their £500,000 Hello! cash-in. You can't really see the pair of them arguing the bit out over transubstantiation.

My favourite, though, by a long shout, remains Harry's girl, Chelsy Davy, a kind of very rich man's Letitia Dean.

Current media speculation has it that she's undergoing a My Fair Lady-like makeover from 'scantily-clad partygirl' to 'prospective princess'. Cast as Fergie to Middleton's Diana, the reckoning is she's become increasingly anxious to impress Buck House.

The evidence for this? Er, she wore a knee-length skirt and jacket to the ceremony at which Harry received his first Army medal.

Do they think she's some sort of half-wit? Of course, Chelsy wasn't going to wear her 'trademark short skirt and flip flops' to the event at Combermere Barracks in Windsor.

Just as she'll not let the side down at the Phillips' wedding this weekend.

The problem with both Middleton and Kelly is that already they seem to be trying too hard to cow-tow to the Windsors. Since university, Middleton seems to have spent her time doing little other than walking around poker-faced, trying not to put a foot wrong. Except, of course, when she's been learning to shoot deer.

At least Davy's no mug, and seems to have a life — and mind — of her own, which as we know, is exactly what one needs to survive life in the Windsor bosom, especially since William and Harry are clearly their father's sons. Her royal romance didn't scupper her plans to study at Leeds University and, never mind the knee-length skirts, Davy oozes sex appeal and fun.

Plus, she looks like the sort of young woman who wouldn't be messed around. You get the feeling that if Harry asked Davy to convert, she'd either throw him a rugby ball — or lamp him.

No wonder, her 84-year-old grandfather countered sniffy suggestions that Harry should be wary of associating with Chelsy because of her dad's links to Mugabe, by saying he was more worried by what she was getting herself into with the royals: "For us, it is the other way round. Her life will not be the same and that is what worries me."

I'm sure.