Last updated at 8:13 AM on 11th April 2011 Melanie Phillips A wedding is an occasion where good manners require one not to carp, in keeping with the spirit of the happy occasion. Actually, weddings are occasions where everyone carps like mad — about the venue, the relatives, the bride’s mother’s outfit — but generally behind their hands. When it comes to the latest Windsor bash, however — the forthcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton — private misgivings necessarily give way to public concern. Guest list: Charles has invited a Kazakh billionaire and a German playboy turned art collector whose uncle was in the SS to the wedding of his son, Prince William to Kate Middleton The venue of Westminster Abbey? Entirely in keeping. The relatives? Suffice to say, closets stuffed full of skeletons will be locked tightly shut (although memories of that other wedding, featuring Prince William’s mother, will undoubtedly flood poignantly and unstoppably out). The bride’s mother’s outfit? Well, we pray that her attire is in keeping with her role as a representative of the older generation giving way gracefully to the younger. But my dear, the guest list! First there were fears of an unseemly fixation with celebrity culture, with invitations having gone out to stars such as David and Victoria Beckham. But at least (one assumes) these were on the list of the bride and groom themselves. And it is their wedding, after all, even if — unlike mere commoners — Prince William’s constitutional position as second-in-line to the throne means that any lack of dignity or decorum on his part will create a certain amount of flak. But now, with more details of that guest list having become known, the event is turning into something altogether more distasteful. For some of the prospective guests are not friends nor even apparent national icons or role models. The list is also full of the happy couple’s parents’ business contacts. And not only merely business contacts, but people to whom both Prince Charles and the Middletons owe favours. In other words, it looks like it’s payback time — and with a now apparently obligatory East European oligarch thrown into the dubious mix for good measure. For example, among those invited to the wedding breakfast is Jon Zammett, head of public relations at the German car manufacturer Audi. For more than ten years, members of the Royal Family have benefited from Audi’s privileged leasing and ownership deals. Prince Charles and his household drive a fleet of luxury Audis on which they receive a discount. The Queen also has one of these cars, while Princes William and Harry and Kate Middleton all reportedly own or lease one of the Audi fleet. In return for this immensely prestigious business, Audi has spent tens of thousands of pounds in sponsoring the Princes’ annual charity polo matches. Such apparent ‘cash for car hire’ involving the royals might well raise eyebrows in itself. But now Audi has achieved the ultimate product placement — a seat at the wedding breakfast for its top PR honcho. Then there are the Middletons, who have invited a number of people who have provided holiday services to them on the ultra-exclusive Caribbean island of Mustique. These reportedly include the island’s tennis coach Richard Schaffer, yoga teacher Gregory Allen and equestrian centre manager Liz Saint, as well as the managing director of the privately-owned island Roger Pritchard and head of villa rentals Jeanette Cadet. Not to mention one Basil Charles, the flamboyant owner of Mustique’s Basil’s Bar, whose main claim to fame until now has been the champagne-fuelled all-night parties he throws for the island’s mega-rich guests. Doubtless our hearts are all warmed by this near-feudal gesture of appreciation to the island’s tourism apparatus. The thought that it might guarantee the Middletons further unlimited tennis, yoga and riding, along with luxury villas and other holiday essentials on the island, is doubtless too unworthy to be entertained for a moment. But perhaps the invitations that really make you rub your eyes are those sent out by the Prince of Wales. For his guest list is studded with foreign tycoons, a number of whom have featured in financial and personal controversy. For example, his list includes Timur Kuanyshev, a Kazakh oil and construction billionaire. In 1993, Kuanyshev was reportedly detained by Russian customs with his wife and two associates at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. In a case which never went to court, they were accused of concealing in their underwear $1,000,000 in undeclared cash. The money being smuggled out of Russia was said to have been a loan meant to be placed in a bank in Kazakhstan. Tycoon: Kazakh businessman Timur Kuanyshev (left) has made his fortune from the oil and construction industries Another invitation has been sent to Manuel Colonques and his wife Delfina. Not only did Colonques’s Spanish tiling firm Porcelanosa carry out extensive work at Prince Charles’ residences, but controversially the Spaniard paid for a string of events at royal palaces, including meeting a ‘significant proportion’ of the costs of a lavish dinner last month at Buckingham Palace attended by showbusiness stars. And what about American financier Joe Allbritton, the former owner and the biggest shareholder of Riggs Bank, which was at the centre of an investigation by U.S. Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission two years ago? The bank was fined £23 million for a money laundering plot involving Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Yet Allbritton has been a regular guest of Prince Charles at Highgrove and has even lent him a Gulfstream private jet, as well as subsidising the American-based Prince Of Wales Foundation to the tune of £190,000 a year. These people will be rubbing shoulders at the wedding with members of the Royal Family, Commonwealth leaders and dozens of occupants of foreign thrones. Regular guest: Prince Charles even lent financier Joe Allbritton a Gulfstream private jet This is not a question of snobbery. From this guest list arises a whiff of something a little more pungent than the rose petals strewn at the bridal feet. It has the smell of ‘cash for invitations’. For heaven’s sake, this is the Royal Family we’re talking about, not venal politicians. The Prince of Wales has hitherto courted controversy over issues such as education, environmentalism and architecture. Whether or not one agreed with his views or the wisdom of his entering these debates, there was no doubting his sincere commitment to the public interest. But just when did His Royal Highness enter the palm-greasing business? Next to all this lot, the inclusion of the merry-making managers of Mustique appears positively seemly. Let us also not forget that this is supposed to be the ‘People’s Royal Wedding’, with Westminster Abbey filled with children, volunteers and the homeless. Of course, these people may well be there, too. In other words, the guest list is the jumbled product of many very different agendas. Indeed, as an uncomfortable alliance of altruism and cynicism, effortless superiority and rank vulgarity, naivety and mutual back-scratching, you might say that the event is shaping up to be the royal firm’s equivalent of the coalition government. It’s supposed to be the most prized invitation of the year. But, frankly, given who is on the list, maybe it’s time for others who have received an invitation to stick that grandly embossed piece of cardboard behind the nearest pot plant.Cash for invitations and an unsavoury whiff over the royal wedding guest list
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