Media tires of Waitey Katie - Part 2

You could be excused if you did a double take of last Saturday's edition of The Daily Mail. In what can only be described as an incredible "well duh!" piece of journalism, The Daily Mail's Michael Seamark, Richard Price and Rebecca English threw out their usual sycophantic tendencies towards Kate Middleton and heaped on the negative criticisms of the royal on-off girlfriend instead. Here is a brief run down on their more memorable (and some would say accurate) observations regarding Kate Middleton:

1) By contrast, Kate Middleton has already met William's grandmother several times. But royal sources insist that Chelsy has nothing to fear - and can in fact anticipate a warmer welcome than Kate. "Nobody expects Chelsy to do anything but shine," said a well-placed source. "She has a natural warmth which is somewhat lacking in Kate. It is inevitable that courtiers compare them and as time goes by it is Chelsy who is proving by far the more popular of the two."

2) At the heart of the unflattering comparisons lies Kate's apparently shiftless role as a princess in waiting ("with the emphasis on the word 'waiting'," as one royal source witheringly put it this week). At 26, she has barely done a day's genuine work in her life. In the three years since she graduated from St Andrews University with a creditable upper-second-class honours degree, she has drifted from one project to another with little apparent relish.

3) "Kate still has a lot of friends - after all, being William's girl puts her in a pretty powerful position socially - but privately her lifestyle is regarded with something approaching contempt," says a source who has been intimately involved in the princes' group of friends for years.

4) "We live in an egalitarian age and Chelsy has won a lot of respect for the normality of her life. She lives in this incredibly rundown student hovel, lives on spaghetti bolognese and works very hard indeed on her course." "Kate is still living with her mum and dad in their country mansion, and really only pops into London to visit her flat in Chelsea when William is at Clarence House."

5) "Chelsy hates publicity and runs a mile every time she sees a photographer. But while Kate resents being followed around by the paparazzi during the day, she'll never go into a nightclub by the back door when there's a scrum of photographers at the front."

6) "It might not be entirely fair, but a lot of people are of the view that the only thing Kate truly cares about is getting William to marry her. Chelsy is different. In fact I would say her popularity is in danger of eclipsing Kate altogether."

7) Miss Middleton's only work since leaving university was as an accessories buyer for the clothing chain Jigsaw. Given that the company's owners are friends of her family, who lend her their villa in Mustique for holidays with William, it is perhaps unsurprising that her time there was less than taxing.

8) "It looks as though Kate is basically on a promise that if she hangs in there and keeps her nose clean William will pop the question in a year," says a well-placed source. "There are plenty of people lining up to have a go at her for it, but it says as much about William as it does about her."

9) "William and Kate are different. They are more like brother and sister. For Harry and Chelsy it's very spontaneous and passionate, which is why you couldn't rule out a proposal."

Stay tuned for more installments in "How to state the obvious, Daily Mail style".

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