Steerpike Steerpike

Did the taxpayer contribute to the ‘Royal Wedding of the North’?

Mr Steerpike is a romantic at heart and a conservative, so I like love and marriage. Yet I was irritated by one detail of the nuptials of Lady Melissa Percy and Thomas van Straubenzee (pictured), dubbed the ‘Royal Wedding of the North’ at Alnwick Castle, which took place this weekend.

It was quite a bash. Prince Harry was caught between two blondes, when his ex and latest squeeze came face to face. Prince William (who was Best Man to his childhood friend van Straubenzee) was flying solo after the heavily pregnant Duchess of Cambridge decided to stay in London lest she be forced to give birth in a northern NHS hospital. The horror, the horror! Pippa Middleton was tottering about with princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. But what caught my eye was the flypast of a Sea King search and rescue chopper; the sort, incidentally, flown by Prince William.

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