LONDON -- The British media are turning up their collective noses at the wedding today between Peter Phillips, Queen Elizabeth's first grandson, and Autumn Kelly that will bring a Canadian into the Royal Family for the first time.
Kelly is being described by the few newspapers paying close attention as an insincere, unsophisticated gold digger from a "suburban backwater" -- the mostly anglophone Montreal suburb of Pointe Claire.
Peter Phillips, the Queen's grandson, and Autumn Kelly will be married Saturday.
Particular attention is being paid to her relatives, a group that includes an uncle in Moncton, N.B., who ran a strip bar, later turned into a gay bar.
Perhaps worse among some British aristocrats, her twin brother Chris is described as a bricklayer, known here as a "brickie."
Autumn's family, mingling today in the same Windsor Castle chapel with the Queen and Phillips' other highbrow relatives, will represent "a decidedly different calibre of guests" which "could cause a few raised aristocratic eyebrows," according to a recent brutal Mail on Sunday profile.
"In short, they are a collection of working-class individuals whose attitudes could well have some of their more blue-blooded fellow guests choking on their quails' eggs if they cross paths at the reception," according to the tabloid.
Sunday Telegraph columnist Melanie McDonagh, meanwhile, was a little more generous in describing the class differences between the two families.
"The encounter between the Queen and Autumn's relations promised to be good fun," McDonagh wrote.
"Her hairdresser mother, bricklayer brother and uncle who ran a strip club called the Platinum Dolls Show Palace ... will be good company, quite possibly better company than the family into which she is marrying."
Kelly shot back at her critics in an interview with a glossy celebrity magazine that reportedly paid the couple $1 million for exclusive access.
"It is insulting, but you simply can't let it get to you. Besides, most of it is rubbish," Kelly told Hello!
"At the end of the day, my family works for a living. They are not all doctors and lawyers, but I don't see anything wrong with what my brother, a builder, does. They all have jobs; they support their families and they are nice, normal people.
"If someone from a newspaper thinks that is not good enough... well, that is their issue, not mine."
Kelly, who plans to continue her job as an assistant to British media personality Sir Michael Parkinson, and Phillips, who works in promotions at the Bank of Scotland, have stressed that they both need to work. Phillips, however, is said to have been the beneficiary of a considerable portion of the late Queen Mother's fortune.
The nasty coverage is being condemned by those more sympathetic to the monarchy in Britain and Canada.
"They are being rather mean to her at the moment," said Majesty Magazine editor Joe Little, who attributes the coverage to the media's tendency to play a "spoiler" role when scooped by a rival.
Little said it's unfair to judge Kelly too hastily since so little is known about her.
Monarchist League of Canada president Robert Finch said dealing with the British media is a lose-lose proposition.
"One day they're complaining about the monarchy being too formal, too crusty; the next day they're poking fun at someone's apparent lack of social status," Finch said in an e-mail. Snooty British media critics shouldn't be surprised or offended that a citizen of a former colony would join the Windsor clan, he said.
"It's about time, really, when you consider Canada's always been a monarchy. After all, the House of Windsor is also the Canadian Royal Family, so it's refreshing to see an ordinary Canadian girl become part of the family."
Other British newspapers have almost completely ignored the event, which is logical given that Princess Anne relinquished her children's titles and the remuneration that comes with them.
-- Canwest News Service
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