Allegations of racist remarks in the highest echelons of the royal family have resurfaced in a new podcast.
Author Aatish Taseer, a former boyfriend of Lady Gabriella Windsor, the king’s second cousin, repeated claims that King Charles once nicknamed an Indian friend “Sooty” and that Princess Michael of Kent had two pet black sheep named Venus and Serena.
Taseer revived the racist remarks controversy in a literary podcast interview this week.
He first made the racism claims in a magazine article for Vanity Fair, in which he also memorably stated of his time with Gabriella, “We swam naked in the queen’s pool at Buckingham Palace; we did MDMA in Windsor Castle.”
Taseer’s most inflammatory claims in Vanity Fair were that King Charles nicknamed a polo-playing Indian pal “Sooty” and that Lady Gabriella’s mother, Princess Michael once kept two black sheep at her former Gloucestershire home, named Venus and Serena, after the tennis playing Williams sisters.
Princess Michael of Kent was forced to apologize after wearing a colonial era badge featuring a caricature of a Black person to a Buckingham Palace lunch with Meghan Markle, her first meeting with her.
In a podcast interview with the “Tell Me About Your Father” Substack, Taseer framed this anecdote as illustrative of what he called a royal “air of abstraction” from ordinary life, saying, “It’s wild. The upper classes live at such a tremendous remove from the country. Prince Charles has a friend called “Sooty,” a close friend, and I think the Venus and Serena (story) was just part of that kind of weird air of abstraction that exists around these people, and they don’t even know how shocking or offensive that might be.”
Speaking about his 2018 Vanity Fair article he said: “I was extremely indiscreet. In England there is really no crime you can commit greater than that.”
The timing of the interview is likely to dismay friends of Gabriella after the tragic death of her husband by suicide last year.
Taseer also gave an insight into the absurdities of royal life saying: “I remember once being on (budget airline) EasyJet and they cordoned off a little row in the front with a velvet rope for their royal highnesses. There they were, in their little row, and I was with them. So it was absurd in many ways.
Asked wryly: “How does one organize to have a section of EasyJet roped off for you?” Taseer replied: “Because it is a kingdom. Their position is a constitutional position and people react to it the way, I guess, they would to any kind of dignitary. It of course exists within the culture, but it also has this formal role.”
Buckingham Palace has been approached for comment on Taseer’s claims.
