8’80s Flashback: Freddie Mercury Dressed Princess Diana As a Man and Took Her To a Gay Club

In a story that’s just way too deliciously ’80s, it’s been claimed that Freddie Mercury once dressed the late Princess Diana as a man – in an army jacket, leather cap and aviator sunglasses – and took her out to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a notorious gay bar, for the night, along with comedians Cleo Rocos and Kenny Everett. The awesome story came to light as Cleo’s book, The Power of Positive Drinking, is currently being serialized in The Sunday Times.

“Scrutinising her in the half light we decided that the most famous icon of the modern world might just – just – pass for a rather eccentrically dressed gay male model.”

“The place was full. It took an absolute eon to edge our way to the bar, with person after person cheerfully greeting us. It was fabulously outrageous and so bizarrely exciting. Our hearts pounded with every new leather-clad hairy body that approached, but no one, absolutely no-one, recognized Diana.

“On we inched, through the leather throngs and thongs, until finally we reached the bar. We were nudging each other like naughty schoolchildren. Diana and Freddie were giggling, but she did order a white wine and a beer. Once the transaction was completed, we looked at one another, united in our triumphant quest. We did it!

“Never has going to a bar been quite so exhilarating and fun. We then made a swift exit, a cab was hailed and we whisked Diana back to Kensington Palace. The jolly queens queuing outside unknowingly waved back as their ‘queen of hearts’ waved goodbye. Not a single person ever found us out.”

“When we walked in… we felt she was obviously Princess Diana and would be discovered at any minute. But people just seemed to blank her. She sort of disappeared. But she loved it.”

This story is great, and totally something I can see Diana doing, without a doubt, because she just didn’t give a shit (in the best possible way). It’s the reason she never fully “fit in” to the royal family, and the reason so many loved her. I just wish there were pictures of this magical night!

April 1, 2013 at 7:30 am by Jennifer

2Is Kate Middleton Having a Daughter?

If you want to put the Queen back in hospital, tell her you’re having a girl rather than a son who can carry on the royal lineage. We don’t know that that’s the case, of course, but Kate Middleton may or may not have inadvertently hinted that this baby of hers is of the lady variety.

From The Telegraph:

It was the merest slip of the tongue, but the Duchess of Cambridge may just have given away the sex of her baby as she chatted to a member of the public on a visit to Grimsby on Tuesday.

After being given a teddy bear as a gift, the Duchess said: “Thank you, I’ll take that for my d …” She stopped herself before going any further, but when a well-wisher asked if she was in the process of saying “daughter” she replied: “We’re not telling.”

The Duchess, who is due to give birth in July, also claimed not to know the sex of her baby, who will one day be monarch, but her comment will be seized upon by royal watchers the world over who are eager for any clues about whether she is expecting a boy or a girl. Precedent dictates that the sex of royal babies is never announced in advance.

The Duchess also said her baby had been kicking “very much” and joked to a fan that she might have to wait a long time before she is queen.

Hmm. Maybe it was a legit tongue-tied moment or perhaps she really is having a girl. So long as it looks better than this CGI rendering, I think we’re in business. This baby needs to get born already. If it’s a girl, how much do we want to wager on Diana being the middle name?

March 6, 2013 at 6:30 am by Jennifer

7Ann Coulter Is Trash-Talking Princess Diana

Todays “Oh No She Didn’t” moment is brought to you by the always ridiculous Ann Coulter. Ann’s been promoting her new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America (ugh), and in a recent interview, she was asked about that super creepy Newsweek cover of Princess Diana with Kate Middleton. Here’s her response:

“I think it’s an insult to, what’s her name? Kate Middleton,” opined Coulter, stating that Middleton is “head and shoulders classier than Lady Di.” She added, “I find it a little baffling when Americans get so gaga-eyed over a princess, and particularly Lady Di, who was just this anorexic, bulimic narcissist.”

Hold up just one minute.  First of all, I absolutely hate it when bitches are out to talk some mad shit and then they act like they can’t even be bothered to remember names.  Among other things, Ann is a newspaper columnist, she knows Kate Middleton’s name. Second of all, saying some fighting words to a dead lady?  Completely pointless, tasteless, and sad.

July 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm by Emily

7Newsweek Gets Creepy for What Would Have Been Princess Diana’s 50th Birthday

Check out that cover, huh?  Yeah, I’m sure that didn’t make anybody feel weird at all.  It totally looks like an appropriate choice from all angles.  For sure.

Princess Diana would have turned 50 on July 1st of this year, so, of course, Newsweek thought it would be fun to talk about all the things she’d be into nowadays, and how she would feel about everything going on in the world.  You know, if she wasn’t dead.  Cool, right?

What she would look like: Still great-looking: that’s a given. Her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, with her cornflower-blue eyes and striding sexuality, was a handsome woman to the very end. Fashionwise, Diana would have gone the J.Crew and Galliano route à la Michelle Obama, always knowing how to mix the casual with the glam. There is no doubt she would have kept her chin taut with strategic Botox shots and her bare arms buff from the gym.

Her love life: Remarriage? At least two, I suspect, on both sides of the Atlantic. Always so professional herself, she would have soon grown exasperated with Dodi Al-Fayed’s hopeless unreliability. After the breakup I see her moving to her favorite city, New York, spending a few cocooned years safely married to a super-rich hedge-fund guy who could provide her with what she called “all the toys”: the plane, the private island, the security detail. Gliding sleekly into her 40s, her romantic taste would have moved to men of power over boys of play. She’d have tired of the hedge-fund guy and drifted into undercover trysts with someone more exciting—a high-mindedly horny late-night talk-show host, or a globe-trotting French finance wizard destined for the Élysée Palace. I suspect she would have retained a weakness for men in uniform, and a yen for dashing Muslim men.

Her stance on Kate Middleton: And Kate, the newly minted Duchess of Cambridge? How would Diana have handled her son’s steadfast affection for a woman other than herself? The rising public adoration of Kate would have afforded Diana some tricky moments. Pleased, yes. But, like Frances Shand Kydd—who, days before Diana’s wedding, suddenly burst out, “I have good long legs, like my daughter”—Diana would have had to adjust to a broadening of the limelight. Her edge over Kate, of course, was her own epic of princessly suffering, which would always make Diana’s story more interesting. (“Happily ever after” will never have the same allure to the press as “It all went horribly wrong.”) Diana, rejoicing in her flawless Spencer pedigree, would have positioned herself as a firm defender of the Middletons against the palace snobs and ostentatiously made Carole Middleton, Kate’s dynamic mother, her new BFF.

On one hand, I can see where this article would be a neat little tribute, but on the other, much larger hand, it creeps me out, and it creeps me out real bad. I hope William and Harry don’t read Newsweek on the regular, because can you imagine?

Where do you guys stand on this: is it cute or completely wrong?

June 28, 2011 at 2:30 pm by Emily

2There’s Apparently a Princess Diana Deathbed Photo Floating Around

Sometimes I seriously question what goes on in the head of some people when they do heinous things all in the name of ‘artistic expression.’

Foreign filmmakers have created a film called Unlawful Killing, which is centered around the suspicious death of Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, back in 1997. The movie is a 90-minute documentary, with an up-close photo of Princess Diana after she was pulled from a mangled Mercedes, moments just before she died. The film is being backed by Lily Allen‘s father and the father of Dodi Fayed himself.

You know, I get the idea that people want the truth behind Diana’s death to be exposed, but I think throwing in a graphic photo of a car crash victim is merely an unnecessary and inappropriate gimmick to get people talking about the documentary, and not Diana’s death itself.

Sources close to the Royal Family claim that they are ‘sickened’ by the idea of a released death photo, but the family has not formally commented on the issue.

The film will debut this Friday at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

May 10, 2011 at 12:30 pm by Sarah