CRAIG BROWN: How Wallis got her kicks… as a kangaroo! Nine things you didn’t know about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
1. Is there anything left to know about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor? Recent books include The Windsor Heist, which reveals the Duke and Duchess were the brains behind the Great Train Robbery and My Friends The Windsors by Sir Basil Brush, the leading glove puppet, and Nazi King, which makes the sensational claim that, by using a false moustache and some sticky-backed plastic, the Duke acted as Hitler’s body-double in 1940.
2. Forthcoming books include The Sex Life Of The Duchess, which suggests the former Wallis Simpson conducted steamy love affairs with, among others, singer George Formby, TV personality Mr Pastry, novelist W. Somerset Maugham, pianist Liberace, Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, TV chef Fanny Cradock, Italian leader Benito Mussolini, renegade peer Lord Lucan and every member of the 1960s group Lord Rockingham’s XI apart from the drummer, who was unavailable.
Is there anything left to know about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor? Such stories include claims the Duke acted as Hitler’s body-double in 1940. Pictured: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1937
3. The Duke had few hobbies or pastimes, and spent most of his final 40 years feeling bored stiff.
According to a close confidante, who would have stayed as a guest in the Windsors’ Paris home if only she had ever met them, the Duke spent five hours a day pulling jigsaw puzzles apart.
‘He never had the application to complete a puzzle, or even start one, but he adored destroying them. Two footmen pieced them together, and then he would pour himself a stiff Dry Martini before messing them up and bursting into tears. He blamed it on his mother.’
4. According to a close confidante, in the late 1960s the Duke became a valued member of the popular dance troupe The Younger Generation. He can be spotted on YouTube dancing just behind Sandie Shaw as she sings her Eurovision winner Puppet On A String.
In common with the rest of the dancers, the Duke is wearing fawn bell-bottoms, a psychedelic shirt and a pink cravat.
‘He may not have been the best dancer, but he always insisted on supplying his own costume, selected from his extensive wardrobe,’ says royal expert Dudley Daft.
The Duke had few hobbies or pastimes, and spent most of his final 40 years feeling bored stiff
5. Recent estimates suggest there are more than 28,500 royal experts in the world today, of whom a quarter claim intimate knowledge of the Windsors.
6. No one knows exactly what went on in the Windsors’ bedroom, but a close confidant once heard a ‘thump-thump-thump’ noise coming through the floorboards.
‘There is only one possible explanation,’ he concluded, ‘and that is that the Duchess liked to dress up as a kangaroo. She would then bounce around the bedroom. It seems likely the Duke would join her in her pouch, dressed up as her baby in his joey costume.’
7. Veteran Windsor expert Michael Blockhead says there is ‘overwhelming’ evidence that the Duchess was the mastermind behind the assassination of President Kennedy.
‘I have uncovered top-secret information that points to the fact that the Duchess was in the South of France at the exact moment when Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger in Dallas, Texas,’ says Blockhead.
‘This can mean only one thing — that she was sending Oswald encoded instructions via satellite, and that the French, American and UK secret services were in on it.’
Recent estimates suggest there are more than 28,500 royal experts in the world today, of whom a quarter claim intimate knowledge of the Windsors
8. HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother never got on with the Duchess. The former teacher of the step-daughter of a man who worked in a bakery next door to a soft furnishings store where the Duchess once bought a silk cushion explained the reason behind the feud in a top-secret memo to leading royal expert Geoffrey Braggart.
‘The Queen Mother never forgave the Duchess for strategically placing a banana skin on the pavement on a royal visit to London’s East End in 1940. The Queen Mother toppled straight into a vat of custard, and came out dripping wet from top to toe. As a result, she never visited the East End again.’
9. Meanwhile, East Enders took the Duchess to their heart, installing her as an honorary Pearly Queen.
In later life, as an after-dinner entertainment, she would regularly play Any Old Iron on the spoons. She was also fluent in rhyming slang.
It is widely believed that the character of Dot Cotton in EastEnders was based on the Duchess of Windsor.
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