The Royal Roundup | Episode 2

Hello and welcome to PodRound, the brand new podcast, bringing you the best royal podcasting each week. This week we're bringing you three podcasts from some great podcasters and we're going to mix it up between legacy media like the broadsheets and the the podcast that they bring us and from some independent podcasters and seeing the difference between the two again. So the first one again is Chu-Chu's is Palace Confidential. This is a podcast brought to us by the Daily Mail and what I've done this week is look at two of their different podcasts. One is Palace Confidential which is like a roundup of all of the Daily Mail's best from the royal reporting that they've done during the week. On Palace Confidential it's presented by Joe Elvin, Rebecca English who is the royal editor and Richard Eden who is the diary editor of the Daily Mail and it's very much from the Daily Mail's perspective and for those of you who are out of the UK it's a right wing conservative newspaper and the journalists that are featured on Palace Confidential are on the royal rotor so they're briefed by the palace they go on the press trips with all the royals and they've really got to the first hand access to the the royal events and everything that's going on there. So their approach to the news is slightly dumbed down I would say from an opinion perspective they try not to get too controversial because they don't want their access taken away from them. So they try to toe the line while also giving an indication of how they feel about certain stories or certain people within the the royal family. This week they start with their coverage of Prince William's attendance at the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury who's the first woman to be the Archbishop of Canterbury for 1400 years. So it's quite a historical occasion but it started a conversation around William's own attitude towards faith and a bit of a debate over the fact that he's going to be when he exceeds the throne the supreme governor of the church of England. So it was interesting to see how they covered that and then moving on to Charles who was actually King Charles III. We look at his pub visit in Cornwall and also this was quite interesting from Rebecca English's point of view because she was actually with him when he visited this pub which was launching a new 0% ale and a little bit of a a joker that they had over the pouring of a pint and the something of this new ale. They covered Beatrice and her marriage that is in trouble with Edo and that was riffing straight off a report that was in the mail on Sunday by Charlotte Griffiths. There was some talk about the state visit from Nigeria and how it's the biggest table in the world. Seating 160 people and how that table is laid and how long it takes and again there's some really interesting behind the scenes talk. They talk about Camilla and what might be happening with her if Charles passes on before her. What would she do with her charities with osteoporosis, literature, literacy, sorry and abuse and domestic violence and then they sort of land on the harry and Megan stories that are floating around talking about the Netflix breakdown and the new polo programme which is a fictional drama that they are producing and there's some talk about also their Australia tour and the petition that's being signed to ask the the government not to allow tax payers money being spent on that tour. Interesting debate about and I didn't know this but they made a snarky comment back via the Sussexes PR people saying that they weren't going to be using tax payers money and they talk about the sort of tone of voice that the Sussexes use and you can tell that they're not particular fans of harry and Megan. They talk about Project Thor then which is a rumored operation that's being driven by the palace to help pave the way back for harry and Megan into the UK. They talk about Boris Johnson's column in the mail on Sunday about how he thinks harry and Megan should come back and this is the ex prime minister and also Tina Brown who's a really well-known editor and journalist and she has her own sub stack and where she's written about the fact that she believes that harry and Megan should be brought back in and they finally finish it all off with the story about Fergie and a reality show that she's been trying to pitch to clone the Queen's corgis. These are two dogs that were given to the Queen before she died by the ex-prince Andrew and Fergie and now they've come back to Andrew and Fergie and Fergie's been trying to do some very odd money making missions to make some TV and one of the ideas was to clone the corgis which really wasn't the greatest idea on this earth but anyway we'll move on. Now another show straight from the same makers is Palace Authorized and I really really enjoyed this particular show because it's a one-on-one interview between Joe Elvin and Hugo Vickers about his book that he's written just recently called Queen Elizabeth II a personal history and we will put a link in here to that book if you be interested in picking that book up and indeed there are links to all of the podcasts that we talk about in the show notes at the bottom of the page here. So Hugo Vickers is a very well-respected author, he's written many books and this book is essentially taking you on a trip all the way through the most significant parts of her life and Joe Elvin talks really beautifully to Hugo Vickers because she's actually reading the way he feels repassionately about his subject and in one part of this podcast he talks about the crown and how he fundamentally got so upset by the way the crown tried to rewrite history that he decided that he was going to do his own book debunking every single episode with a chapter of the book dedicated to each chapter to the crown to show how wrong the crown was in its portrayal of Elizabeth's life and I think this was absolutely a brilliant bit of insight to Hugo Vickers but the sort of things that he talks about here are from actually from his own perspective because he spent time in the Queen's company and he observed himself what she was like. Things like her incredible memory or her sense of humour he talks about how she sort of built her outlook based on the time that she spent growing up in the war years in World War II and all about her motherhood and her accession to the throne and how 25 years old she was actually ready to come to the throne she takes it all he takes it all the way through real significant parts of her history including her love of the Commonwealth and her perspective from her personal tragedy point of view when Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA and how many many years later she had to become the Queen rather than the woman when she was shaking hands with Martin McGinnis to help facilitate peace and he has great insight into some other key moments of her reign including Michael Fagan breaking into Buckingham Palace or the blanks that were shot when she was riding a horse in the troop tripping of the colour and how she was able to control a horse with the sort of calm that you'd expect of the most experience of riders then right the way through to the marriage of Diana and Charles and Diana's death and how she came in for so much criticism when Diana died and she was staying in Balmoral to look after the young princes right the way through then on to Charles' wedding to Camilla and William and Catherine's wedding and how William and Catherine's wedding she was the happiest that anybody had ever seen her at any of the weddings and then the interview finishes off with the Queen's final days and how sad it was and one thing that really stuck in my memory of this whole podcast was the fact that she said that she felt that she was in her departure lounge in her final days and so it was quite a poignant ending to that podcast but I really would encourage you to go and take a look at that and click on the link that's in the notes below so moving on to a completely different vibe and a completely different type of podcast up we have Lauren the insider now I really identify with Lauren because she is like me a YouTube commentator she's a bit more of a media personality than I am she appears on lots of shows like Dan Witten's show and Shona's show with the vintage read podcast and many others and she has like me 20 over 20 years of experience in media and PR and she uses her platform to discuss all things royal. She really is. Somebody you can understand the stories from a PR person's perspective. Laura and I share that same lens. We're looking at why a story's been placed in a certain publication or what the backstory must be to it. And she really understands the media as well and who they're targeting and what their impact and impetus is. So the first podcast, I'm focusing on two of them because Laura does good short shop podcasts. So I've got a bit of time to talk about how she's done two of her podcasts and these have a common theme. The first one was an interview that she did with Andrew Loney, who's one of my favorite authors. And here she really zoned in on how the media is being put off writing about Andrew Loney and how events are being kept are being told to not have him at events. She really believes that the palace is trying to shut Andrew Loney down. Now Andrew Loney for those of you don't know is the writer of a brilliant biography called entitled of Prince Andrew and indeed of the House of York of his marriage to Fergie and the whole history. And there's a new paperback a version of entitled Coming Out in May, which has some addendums after the most recent Epstein files releases. So it's worth taking a look at that book as well. But this is a Sunday times best selling author. And one thing that Lauren inside Lauren the insider really focuses on is the fact that he's also one of the leading literary agents in the UK as well. So when he tells her that he has been dismissed from literary festivals and events that he would previously have been booked at. Lauren's is sort of pricked up there and she took a took in down a certain course of the interview talking about what who was who would be the people that was stopping him. And you sense in this interview also his frustration at his attempts to give the palace give the police all sorts of evidence that he's uncovered about Andrew and his questionable activities as a trade envoy. And they go as far as to say that Andrew lonely believes that trees and could be something that can be leveled at the ex prince Andrew. And as we know prince the ex prince Andrew is arrested and questioned and it's yet to be found out whether anything is going to happen there. But Andrew lonely has a very good insight and good predictions to be made about what he thinks is coming next from the palace. After that interview Laura then takes on the narrative and talks more about the seriousness of what's been going on at Buckingham Palace and how you know these are really serious allegations not only treason but sex trafficking. And she said you know and I thought this was a great line when she said she feels like Jeffrey Epstein was using Buckingham Palace like so-ho house the way he was able to ask whether one of the princesses Beatrice or Usiny would show him round in one of his requests in the emails from the Epstein files. Lauren's really good about talking about the age of transparency and she can see and she says it very eloquently when news stories are filtered through the mainstream media and she's very opinionated definitely worth taking a look at this interview with Andrew Loney in another episode which will link in the in the notes is about another book writer another author called Tom Bauer and he has written a book about Megan and Harry and she's also seen how Tom Bauer's being shut down and she feels that almost like dark forces are at work and she zones in particularly in this episode on a morning show in the UK where Tom Bauer appeared as a guest to talk about his book and how Kat Deely who's one of the interviewers has a big thing in common with Megan Markle she is also a really good friend of Marcus Anderson who's the Soho house guy and she really believes that Megan has briefed Marcus Anderson to brief Kat Deely against Tom Bauer now Lauren the insider says that the questions that Kat Deely and Ben Shepard two co-hosts of this show were asking were unprofessional at best but bordering on the offensive they were trying to make out that he hadn't researched his subject material properly and this is the man who's an ex barista I mean he's a prolific author and a prolific researcher if anything his books are too sourced I mean I've read a few of them and they are intense dreams of detail in these books so I can't see how they could possibly level a criticism Tom Bauer that he didn't have great sources and hadn't done his research properly because if there's anybody who writes a book that's detailed and forensically researched it's that man so Lauren the insider has picked up I think this is a bit of a scoop because nobody else has picked up on the fact that Kat Deely and Megan Markle share this best friend in Marks Anderson and also she notices in this podcast that the lack of mainstream coverage on the book she puts it down to maybe palestock forces at work but I think it might also be because he got this book serialized in the times and when a book is serialized ahead of its release it kind of annoys the other media and they you know they think well that's a times book we won't go near that so I think it's more likely or at least 50% of the reason would be that they saw that as something that had gone to the times as an exclusive and they weren't gonna touch it so that's Lauren the insider check her out a fellow PR supremo moving on to the royalist my favorite Tom Sykes he really is my favorite he comes at royal stories from the perspective of a real insider he went to the same school as Harry and William they they share the same sort of connections and contacts and he's been writing about the royal family for years so his grip on history is fantastic what he's talking about in this particular episode is the news that came out about Prince Harry for one to the better word black mailing the king about not being able to see his grand children if he doesn't invite him to the UK and this all revolves around Harry wanting to get his security back now if you're not above this story the security is a huge thorny issue he lost that security when he ceased to be a working royal and moved abroad security is paid for by the English taxpayer so the British taxpayer I should say and so it is for people who are serving us as the working royal family what Prince Harry wants is to be able to tap into that level of security when he decides to come and go from the country and isn't too far a stretch of the imagination to understand that nobody is really that happy about wanting to pay for Prince Harry to be able to jet in and jet out of the United Kingdom whenever he likes and not be doing the role of a working royal so this so he's getting increasingly frustrated this decision is the King Charles says not made by King Charles but it's made by Ravik which is a committee made up of yes people from the palace but also from the government and it's a cross-party committee as well and they will assess whether they think that he's entitled to have his security back and Prince Charles has said that he is not his decision to make Harry doesn't believe that so he's trying to put the pressure on King Charles and this isn't going down very well with the palace with King Charles with anybody. Tom also looks at this story through the lens of Prince William it's an interesting lens because Thomas hurts that when a royal monarch is coming to the end of their monarchy as we know that King Charles has cancer so you know he has terminal illness you see authority in the power being passed to the the air before the air actually a seed to the throne and so from Tom's perspective he sees that decision about security and about Harry's comings and goings really sitting also and possibly more so with Prince William so again a really interesting an interesting perspective from Tom. Then he moves on to talk about Beatrice and Eugenie. This was a breaking story at the beginning of the week talking about the fact that Beatrice and Eugenie have been told not to come to the Easter service at Sandringham. Now this is a really important royal church service. It's possibly just as important. If not more important than the Christmas walk about that they do after the Christmas service at Sandringham. Every year a lot of the royals turn up and go to the service and Beatrice and Eugenie have historically been there. But they've been told this year not to come just like they've been told not to attend the Ascot races for example and some other events. Now the palace gave out a statement saying that they weren't attending with the agreement and the understanding of the king and it went on to say and I love the way that Tom Sykes particularly breaks down the words that are used in these statements. The sisters have been not been ostracised and are expected to attend future events. And Tom's zoned in on the word expected. It's an interesting take on this because he's saying at one on the one hand they've been told not to come but on the other hand the palace is saying they will be expected to be at other things. So it's all a bit contradictory and a bit confusing but he says that that's the point of the palace eternally. That's what the palace does. Interestingly as well he makes a note of William not attending the service usually on Easter Sunday and this sort of takes us back to that first podcast that he started with talking about William's face and you know the fact that he has more of a quiet face and certainly when he is seated to the throne he will have a different attitude and approach to his role as the supreme governor. So that's Tom Sykes podcast the royalist. Now Tom is a very prolific podcast and he also podcasts for the Daily Beast. So it's definitely worth clicking on his link in the notes below. Do subscribe to that as well because he has coming up a great interview with the chief correspondent of variety, Jack called Matt Donnelly, who wrote the article that was about the take down of a troubled relationship with a Netflix of Harry and Meghan. So do do take a look at that. Well thank you for listening to Pod Round. We are first and foremost pod fans and we love all things podcast. So to start with we're going to be concentrating on the roles as we have done but we'll be taking deep dives into other subjects. So contact us, comment, you can contact us at substack by searching for pod round, drop us comment on any place that you are consuming your podcast and look out for us every week. See you next time.