To the United States of America, whose rumoured acquisition of another of our quasi-royals sparks fear of brain drain. In a phenomenon increasingly likened to the influx of intelligentsia before the second world war, it is said that Pippa Middleton is to join luminaries such as Fergie York and Earl Paul Burrell in plying her trade stateside. The latter pair’s freedom from persecution has already led to US advances in the fields of weight-loss marketing and reality television.
Now Pippa looks likely to expand those cultural gains to the field of journalism, with reports suggesting that she may be hired as a reporter for NBC’s flagship breakfast show, Today.
Our immediate sympathies, of course, should be reserved for our own Today programme, whose pursuit of Pippa has been relentless, and who will find this news particularly difficult to cope with. A bit like when José Mourinho realised he wasn’t going to get the Man United job, and had to check into a Madrid hotel where he spent the night crying to his agent on the phone.
To the victor go the spoils, though, and NBC’s courtship of Pippa has been a masterclass, considering, as she told them back in June, that she’s “just trying to live a life like any 30-year-old”. “I think she’s incredibly grounded,” Today show host Matt Lauer declared after interviewing her back then. “She’s blown away by the attention she’s gotten in the past two or three years and is not sure what to do with all that attention.”
How about parlay it into a hilariously lucrative contract with the Today show?
I say lucrative, but as yet there are no details on any salary Pippa would be paid. However, she would join what the Daily Beast refers to as a “lucky sperm club” at NBC News, whose previous reporters have included Jenna Bush, Princess Di’s brother and Chelsea Clinton. For three years, Chelsea accepted just the $600,000 per annum for very occasional reports – a remuneration package not thought to have endeared her entirely to colleagues whose parents weren’t Hillary and Bill Clinton.
As for Pippa, her paycheques to date have included: £400,000 from Viking for a book of her auto-parodic party tips; an unspecified sum for a Daily Telegraph “Sport and Social” column; and further unspecified amounts for a regular outing in Waitrose magazine.
So by this stage in her storied adventures, you may have identified the central agony: namely, that Pippa could do practically any other job without media criticism that she was milking her connections – but the one vocation she seems to have absolutely set her heart on is a career in the media milking her connections. It really is the cruellest of ironies.
Still, given that the Today gig is unlikely to place a huge demand on her time, the pathologically industrious Pippa is likely to be casting around for further opportunities. And though she has not specifically charged this column with assisting her in her search, recent tragic events in the Mojave desert have reminded this column of the strange world of Virgin Galactic.
Those with the misfortune of being regular readers may recall that Lost in Showbiz has long taken an interest in Richard Branson’s spaceflight outfit, somewhat unfairly characterised as a private enterprise when you consider New Mexico taxpayers were relieved of $220m to build his spaceport. Of particular interest has been the firm’s endlessly public emphasis on celebrity, with the signing-up of entertainers and the odd minor royal regarded as key to Branson’s beloved marketing.
Last year, a Wired report on Virgin Galactic found even the project manager displaying an odd sort of conversational tic for a chief engineer. “Whenever he refers to the needs of Virgin Galactic’s paying passengers in describing the design process,” the Wired reporter observed, “he has a habit of using the names of the vehicle’s most well-known celebrity ticket-holders as a sardonic shorthand: ‘You don’t want to take Angelina and tumble her around leaving the atmosphere,’ he’ll say. ‘Is Angelina really going to shimmy down a rope ladder when some emergency happens?’” Talking about the focus a celebrity cargo brings to the importance of eliminating fatal faults, he was in similar vein. “If one bolt falls off and you die,” he explained, “that’s a single point of failure. There were things that you probably would have done differently if you’re going to carry Angelina Jolie.”
But it is a throwaway mention of Princess Beatrice in one of the welter of stories about Virgin Galactic this past week that reminds LiS of one of the company’s most idiosyncratic departments. Specifically, the “astronaut relations department”. Precisely what this corporate entity does is unclear, though I can tell you that it is headed up by Branson’s nephew, one Ned Rocknroll, whom you may recall is now married to Kate Winslet. Working under Ned Rocknroll – and I do think it is useful to get a sense of the chain of command in astronaut relations – is a Dave Clark (not that one), who it turns out is the gentleman caller of Princess Beatrice.
Fairly soon, no doubt, the motto “To reach the stars, we first have to date them” will be carved into the lintel of astronaut relations. But, in the meantime, might this not be the sort of work to which Pippa would be ideally suited?
