As I’ve said before, I really enjoy Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast. He’s their resident royal-reporter/royal analyst guy. He doesn’t travel with the royal press pack, but I get the feeling that he knows those reporters and he often reports what they’re telling him, anonymously of course. So Sykes has an exclusive about the Work-Shy Cambridges, because ‘tis the season to talk about how little the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge actually do. It’s worth noting that Will and Kate have made some improvements in the first two months of this year: they’ve done a lot more – or they’ve seemed to do a lot more – in January and February as opposed to years past, when their Christmas holiday seems to bleed into St. Patrick’s Day coverage. Still, Sykes points out that William and Kate only have a few events scheduled between now and their March 17-18 trip to Paris. William and Kate are already back in Norfolk, apparently. And the royal reporters are bitching about how “spoiled” they are. Some highlights:

Kate’s schedule following her appearance at the Air Cadets event on V-Day: “The next day the shutters went up, Kate and William retreated to Norfolk and, astonishingly, Kate only has three public appearances between now and that trip to France. The first is next Wednesday (February 22), when she will undertake her first engagement as the royal patron of Action for Children, visiting mental health projects for children in Wales. Kate has another engagement on the last day of February in London, opening the Ronald McDonald House at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Aside from a church service on March 9, Kate will otherwise be out of public view until the Paris trip.”

The Cambridges don’t want to give up their life in the country: “Despite extensive counsel to the contrary, it seems William and Kate are not yet ready to give up the leisured life they have for some years been enjoying with their ‘Turnip Toff’ landowning friends in the backwaters of Norfolk, a hundred miles from the capital and any serious, sustained press scrutiny. Their argument is that they are busy working behind the scenes, and raising their kids, and that making sure the next generation of royalty is as sane and balanced as possible is just as important work as cutting ribbons.”

Sympathy is waning for Will & Kate, especially when they talk about how “hard” it is to be parents: As one well-informed British commentator who wished to remain anonymous told the Daily Beast: “Whenever he talks about how hard parenthood is you realize he has no idea how his choices come across.” The commentator says this is, “partly because no one dares tell him that doing so little looks pathetic; they surround themselves with yes people including staff and friends. They are very spoiled and indulged.”

The journalists talk among themselves: “Certainly, the persistent chatter among the journalists who cover the royal beat is informed by constant disbelief of how little the Cambridges do, despite regular admonishments in the press… If William and Kate do slip up, the press, who have showed Olympian levels of restraint in their coverage of the royals in recent years, will eat them alive, so heavily built up is the resentment from a series of sleights, non-co-operation and attempts to cut them out of the picture.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Yes, pretty much. William and Kate consistently sound out-of-touch and oblivious to the real concerns of honest-to-God normal blokes. They seem more out-of-touch than Prince Charles, for the love of God.

Sykes also notes that he contacted the Kensington Palace press office about Kate’s event schedule and KP apparently re-sent him the statement from Christmas about being “keen to continue to increase their official work on behalf of The Queen and for the charities and causes they support.” They literally think that just promising to be keen is somehow equal to working. Sykes ends the story by noting that William still doesn’t listen to his father’s advice and Will “only hires youthful advisers who will agree with him.” Yep. I would argue that there’s another problem with William that usually goes unremarked on: William thinks he has his mother’s public relations and media instincts. He does not. There’s a consistent problem with William thinking he’s being very clever with the media when in fact he’s showing how dull and amateurish his whole operation is.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.