The clattering sound of a tumbling drinks tray pierced the friendly hubbub.
A woman guest had accidentally knocked it from the waitress's hands while standing up suddenly from her chair.
As staff at Highgrove, where Prince Charles was holding a seminar on the environment, scrabbled to collect the glasses which were rolling around the floor, the embarrassed guest offered her profuse apologies to elderly waitress Peggy Archer
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What HAS Charles's toothpaste squuezer got to hide?: Royal fixer Michael Fawcett bans friends from helping with a book about his friendship with the heir to the throne | Mail Online
As usual with the Daily Mail this is full of misleading & malicious statements.
1. Michael Fawcett was not sacked for selling gifts (in the plural). He only sold 1 present (an inkstand given to Prince Charles as a birthday present by his friend of 25 years standing, King Hussein of Jordan) & that sale was made expressly at Prince Charles’s request so that the money could be used to buy rare trees to cultivate in the gardens at Highgrove. This was stated in Peat’s report on the matter published on-line in 2003.
2. The undated photo showing Michael Fawcett standing in doorway behind Prince Charles & Prince William at Holyrood Palace must date to before 2002 as it also shows Sir Stephen Lamport Prince Charles’s previous Private Secretary from 1997-August 2002. At this time Michael Fawcett was entitled to be there as he was a member of Charles’s staff in charge of organising receptions & private parties & buying the prince’s personal gifts to friends & staff.
3. Prince Charles did not employ Michael Fawcett after he had been a footman at Buckingham Palace. He was originally taken on as a part-time assistant valet to the Prince, spending the rest of the time as a shop assistant in Turnbull & Asser shirt store. As a former employee of T&A shop he is entitled to buy goods at a 40% discount. Not surprising then that he wears T&A shirts himself!
4. Prince Charles is not the landlord at Kensington Palace (the Crown Estate is) so he can’t make any former member of staff homeless from their apartments in the Palace. He is the landlord of property in Kennington, a south London suburb of totally different social character to Kensington Palace.
5. Geoff Smith, a former valet to Prince Charles is unfortunately now dead & so (fortunately for the Daily Mail, who according to the Sunday Telegraph used to pay him substantial retainers but only if he provided them with salacious stories about the Prince) is in no position to confirm or deny the stories about him. What we do know about him was confirmed by an independent report produced by an English barrister & published on Prince Charles’s website in 2003. He was an alcoholic (whose suffering was due to post traumatic stress disorder after the Falklands War). His treatment in the Priory Clinic was being paid for by Prince Charles, when it was interrupted early in 1996 by a visit from Princess Diana who smuggled in a hidden tape-recorder & whole bottle of whisky which she plied him with in order to tape his story about a supposed homosexual rape. His story was later investigated by Hammersmith Police & proved to be false. Such a story if true would have proved useful in Princes Diana’s concurrent divorce negotiations as she could then have claimed complete custody of the young princes on the grounds that they were in danger of being sexually harassed if they stayed in Prince Charles’s household.
7. Rupert Lendrum (now Secretary of Brook’s gents club) was only Senior Equerry to Prince Charles for 1 year (2003-04). As the Appendix to the Prince’s Annual Report for 2004 shows Lendrum’s remit did not include overseeing Prince Charles’s private social engagements or parties (that was done by Virginia Carrington longstanding friend & former flatmate of Camilla’s in the early 1970s) so Michael Fawcett’s party planning should not have encroached on Lendrum’s job. He is more likely to have resigned because as a former sponsorship director of Moet & Chandon champagne he tried to retain his close links to them.
8. Malcolm Ross was appointed by Peat to post of Master of Household to Prince Charles, a totally newly created post in 2005 which incorporated a lot of what had previously been Peat’s job, but tagged on Virginia Carrington’s former role of organising the Prince’s Camilla’s private social engagements e.g. parties/dinners for the couple’s friends & Camilla’s family. Ross was totally unsuited to this job as despite & because of being a longstanding member of Queen’s Household he had never met Camilla let alone any of her friends or relatives before his appointment. Not surprisingly he didn’t last long in the job.
9. Farquaharson has been made redundant due to the staff savings necessary during the ‘credit crunch’. Several gardeners at Highgrove have also been made redundant, but unlike Farquaharson they don’t know the journalist Susan Clarke, with her close links to the Daily Mail & Evening Standard. Unlike Rupert Lendrum (a friend of Clarke’s of several years standing) as also is Lady Elisabeth Anson, the Queen’s cousin and more significantly head of Party Planners, which organises most of the Queen’s receptions & parties & so a major rival to Michael Fawcett’s company for Prince Charles’s business. Need I say more.
I understand Charles gets on well with Salmond! 
You can get all the information that BellaFay has posted simply by putting the names into Google. 
