Today, we’re getting a very special episode of “What About Baldingham?” On Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had events and meetings all over New York. Their conversations were about vaccine equality and 9/11 remembrance. Meanwhile, what about Prince William? He *also* had an event, you guys. Sure, the event garnered few headlines and he was completely cut out of national and international attention. But still, Baldemort is important, right? He is, after all, the one-finger-typist who created Earthshot! He’s the guy who is keen about football! Well, that’s what he was doing yesterday: being keen about football.
It’s well known that Prince William is a serious soccer fan, and the prince is putting his passion for the pitch into action. William, 39, visited Dulwich Hamlet club in southeast London on Thursday afternoon, joining forces with podcaster and former soccer star Peter Crouch to keep the ball rolling on a new initiative.
William’s meeting with players, club management and football fans from a range of clubs was the next step in the Fan Led Review, a program set up in April 2021 to provide a comprehensive examination of the English football system and explore ways of improving the governance, ownership and financial sustainability of clubs across all levels of the sport.
William greeted Crouch – who is director of football at Dulwich Hamlet — with a fist bump and they joked about the take-away meal they shared over a podcast recording (William joined the That Peter Crouch Podcast host, who interviewed the prince to help publicize the Heads Up mental health campaign last year.) “The last time I saw you we were having a curry, now you’ve got a proper job!” William told him.
William, who is President of the Football Association, was intrigued about Dulwich Hamlet’s close relationship with fans, asking, “What is it about the model here that’s worked so well? What’s the best practice that can be replicated elsewhere?”
“…A comprehensive examination of the English football system and explore ways of improving the governance, ownership and financial sustainability of clubs…” Or football could just make everything more accessible for fans? The sport I follow – tennis – has the same problem, the struggle to make the complex web of governance, oversight, rules, tours, points, etc more accessible to fans and casual viewers. You shouldn’t have to basically take college courses to enjoy sports. But of course William wasn’t there to argue for simplifying the governance of football. That would be too forward-looking from… the Football Association president.
As for the stuff with Peter Crouch… first of all, that’s the sole reason why William does anything with “football causes,” it’s because he likes to hang out with current and former footballers. Second of all, what I remember of William’s appearance on that podcast is how he made a “joke” of the food-delivery guy being frisked on the floor by his security. Har-har, just another joke for What About Baldingham.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
@Kaiser, you are the king of captions and picking the right photos. Heir Force 2 has his concerned and listening face on in the photo you chose 😂😂😂😂
That first picture is one that KP posted on their IG. They clearly think it makes him look serious and intense lol.
Lol! I thought that was a classic Kaiser shade picture where she chose one of the more unflattering ones from a big pile of photos the DM had or something. But KP CHOSE the picture where he manages to look pissed off, mean, incredulous, bored, confused, and constipated all at once? On purpose? Not on accident where they tweeted and deleted and then fixed it by reposting the same words with a better, more flattering pic? Wow. Do we think that Will and Kate are so uninvolved with their own social media and office that they have no idea what pictures are being posted? Is someone mad at them and trying to shade them? Or does he really think this makes him look serious and engaged?
Rather than serious and intense, he just looks confused. Which is probably pretty accurate since he barely has two brain cells to rub together.
we’re in the age of “Satire Is Now Real Life”, so this makes complete sense.
MF1 is right, he looks befuddled and bemused.
More like constipation than concentration!
More like constipated….
more like Hair Force Zero
LMAO, if that’s his “listening face” then he’s in trouble…he just looks constipated. 😂
OMG you’re right!!
OMG that was my first thought too!
He also needs to get that false tooth looked at. It looks like it’s got a bit of decay going on up there in the upper corner 🤢. He may need a new tooth.
@Scorpion I was just about to say the same thing! It’s always like that, but this post is particularly good. I also enjoy the other photos she tacks on, which are subtly perfect.
@AmyToo OMG I just saw your comment and I’m crying at “he manages to look pissed off, mean, incredulous, bored, confused, and constipated all at once”
Dead 😭
(and yes, I think he really thinks photos like that make him look like he cares intensely about the issue — and apparently the Gold Standards agree, since they’re probably picking the photos)
The frustration is showing on his face,he looks red and about to burst.
Ps: I wonder how tech savvy and modern our typist is. If he has an iphone and secret lurker accounts on instagram.
I wonder sometimes if he appeases this frustration by reading all the negative Harry and Meghan articles that come out the next day in the British press.
He does. The bm even said William was addicted to reading the news. It was in the original peacemaker story. Low key Carole exposed him jfc
@Zebz how gross it that? I get it- it’s human nature, and I wouldn’t be able to resist looking sometimes, too. But the implication that it brings him joy, or satisfaction, to see how thoroughly Meghan and Harry are being trashed every day? That it brings him joy and he looks forward to it with his morning coffee? I just…
Not going to try to armchair diagnose him because I wouldn’t even know where to start, but there is something *very* wrong with that man.
He can’t even pretend to care about anyone other than himself. That’s…distressing
And then he went to a football game last night! He never stops working!
In all seriousness – nothing is wrong with this kind of event for William. It does seem we’re back to the idea of “we have to make it about football for him to work” but on its face, this is a perfectly fine engagement for him, even if it pales compared to Harry meeting with Chelsea Clinton and Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield and DiBlasio etc. Not every royal event is going to be or needs to be some high powered meeting with bigwigs.
BUT the issue is that William has been convinced by his “yes men” that HE is the statesman, HE is the diplomat, HE is the royal that people want to meet, HE is the one that people take seriously, that NO ONE takes HARRY seriously, he’s just a joke – you can bet your ass William was watching coverage of Harry in NYC yesterday and was ticked. Those are the kinds of meetings he thinks he should be doing.
The issue of course is that while leaders might meet with William out of courtesy, nothing substantive is ever going to come of it and all involved know that.
Well maybe his ego would have been stroked a bit if his “fans” could have just focused on this event instead of what was happening across the pond. Instead every deranger was talking about harry and meghan and they left william in the dust.
Lol. That’s the rub, isn’t it? No matter what he does, they always talk about Harry and Meghan.
Hahahaha. When will the penny drop for the derangers and racists?
Great minds think alike @becks1!We literally wrote about the same thing at the same time!
This should be considered an acceptable engagement for William but it doesn’t bring the clicks or make them money. The RR business model includes selling their royal coverage overseas but the world outside of England is more interested in the Sussexes now. They know that and that is why they obsessively yet grudgingly keep covering them.
@snuffles: They don’t cover them grudgingly. They don’t mind covering h&m at all. Like you said it makes them plenty of money. The thing they are salty about is that h&m aren’t offering them any access, like the other royals do.
@pao
I don’t think we’re too far off on opinion. We agree they liked the money they got from covering them, but I doubt many of the RRs actually like Meghan. They blame her for taking Harry away. They blame her for the loss of access. When in reality, it was 90% Harry’s doing. They thought Harry genuinely liked them and they can’t accept that he’s actually always hated their guts this whole time and was just good at playing the game when he felt he HAD to.
I’m sure of the other royals brought in the same amount of clicks and cash they would have backed off off the Sussex’s by now. But their entire livelihood lives or dies by clicks and cash and therefore they must continue to desperately grasp at them to survive even if they despise them.
It struck me yesterday that Harry and Meghan never have to do a rinky-dink, ribbon cutting, pint pouring event again. Not that these events are bad, but they do sort of diminish the brand a bit and make it seem somehow like the royals are less serious. Even Meghan’s lighter events, like the 40×40 call on her birthday, have a much higher production value and—more importantly—more public impact than whatever this is.
A few snaps of William at a table don’t really mean much. It would be fine if they were doing more, but their more “important” events are videos of poking at typewriters
Yup. If they do a ribbon cutting event again, it will be for the Archewell Wing at a local hospital, or the Archewell Women’s Center, or something. They’re moving in a completely different league entirely now.
@Gruey – that is such a good point that I hadn’t really considered. By exiting the family entirely, H&M have freed themselves from the bread and butter events that comprise the majority of what Royals do (and comprise the majority of what Will and Kate hate) and can choose only to do what really interests them and makes a difference. Oh the irony. The schadenfreude. Hahaha.
If Charles does a lightweight event like this, it’s after he’s done a few bread and butter engagements or more serious issues. Billy and Cathy are still doing engagements that are fun for them without any real effort on the less “fun” issues. So the contrast of Harry working on vaccine equity on the same day that Billy is talking footie just really shows the difference. The main difference is that Harry isn’t costing the taxpayers millions for this dilettante type behaviour.
In short both the Cambridges are a joke and deserve the derision for still doing so little at age 40.
I don’t even think Harry and Meghan minded doing engagements like that; they do genuinely seem to like meeting people, and I’m sure Harry understands the importance of appearances like that, how much goodwill they buy the RF. I don’t think they saw themselves as above it, or as a waste of their time or anything.
BUT unlike the Cambridges, it’s not ALL they wanted to do. They also wanted to work on projects and initiatives that would result in more than a photo op that everyone would forget by the next day anyway.
Meghan was probably incredulous when it began to sink in that what the RF expected of her is the exact opposite of what she’d thought she’d be able to do: a lot of the same work she’d already been doing, but with a higher profile and much larger platform, and obviously a focus on the UK. I guess she’d focused mostly on Invictus and Sentebale because of Harry, and didn’t realize that those were, I think, aberrations, and not the norm for the “spare?”
However, she must have noticed how little the Cambridges did — and that what they did do was fluffy and not at all impactful, and nothing had a sense of urgency to it, like the cookbook— those women needed help NOW, not in ten years after Kate had 80 planning meetings about it.
My guess is that when Harry made it known to the family years and years ago that he wanted to leave, they compromised, and Charles & the Queen allowed him to do Invictus/Sentebale? (Even though I’m sure William was less than thrilled.) But if that’s what it took to keep him from leaving, they felt they had no choice? No clue, this is all just my speculation.
Why I’m curious about is how it got to the boiling point that it did. Did the family not make any of their expectations known to her when she and Harry were engaged, or even before Harry ever proposed, made it clear? How did she seemingly have no idea of the restrictions that would be placed on her? That’s where the disconnect seemed to be, imo. Hopefully one day we’ll know.
(Obviously I think they would have gotten married either way; she loves Harry, so it’s not like she would have bounced. But it just seems like her expectations about her role were the polar opposite of the family’s expectations of her.)
Like i said, banging his arms and fists on the wall in incandescence in the background screaming “What about meeeeeeeee!”
Compared to seeing Harry yday and this one today, Harry looks more like someone getting ready for role of the future king, talking about vaccine equality. None of the royals have even breathed a letter! The bullsh*t rule about “the royals can’t ever ever ever dabble or talk about political matters” doesn’t apply at this point because
a) the equal right to the COVID vaccine providing protection from a world deadly virus is not a political matter, it’s basic human right and
b) they’re more than willing to dabble into Scottish politics when it suits them.
“Now you’ve got a proper job!” And you still don’t william
Seriously. What a douchey thing to say. But look at who we’re dealing with here….
I read that comment and cringed 😖. How utterly and unbelievably cruel for Baldimort to make this statement to Peter Crouch!!! His utter disregard for others, including making fun of the delivery driver for their food, is a prime example of why TOB will NEVER be a king for the benefit of the commonwealth OR its citizens. TOB is so far up his own arse that he can’t even pretend to be interested OR present himself as a man of compassion and empathy. TOB will certainly be the conduit to destroy the Monarchy as he refuses to think of anyone BUT himself!
He is so mean. All of his “jokes” are cruel. He must be a seriously rotten person if even his jokey friendly conversation always has this mocking or belittling tone to it. I can’t understand why anyone would ever want to spend time with him.
yes, this is it. The cruelty of it. So what is Crouch supposed to say?
Baldy should know by now that self deprecating jokes are always better received.
And I still don’t feel bad for Crouch. He had no problem laughing at TOB when he was talking about the delivery driver.
There are just certain one who think they are different and it will never happen to them.
@AmyToo, exactly, William’s “jokes” are always mean-spirited, tone deaf, and insulting for a “statesman” of his stature (🙄). And it’s not as if he accidentally said something insensitive once— he does it over and over again, so we know that’s just who he is.
Remember when he “joked” about how the peasants would get home from Wimbledon during the transit strike? Or when he mockingly held up that pink watering can, basically saying he would be too embarrassed to be a part of that organization because it’s not “manly” enough for him? Laughing hysterically while playing basketball in a wheelchair, like “I can’t believe you guys actually have to do this every day! What a hoot!”
Oh, and my favorite! When he publicly told everyone at an engagement that he hadn’t bothered to read the briefing papers his staff had prepared for him, so he didn’t even know Diana had been there once (maybe even for the opening?). That’s insulting to EVERYONE. It reflected that he didn’t give one single sh!t about anything. That was offensive to the staff at the organization, who had no doubt worked hard in advance of his visit, the aide who went to the work of writing it for him.
Not to mention his Covid “jokes.”
William is just the worst possible person for the position. He’s arrogant, his instincts are terrible, and he offends people constantly. He has a hard time hiding his boredom during many engagements, and his attempts to look like he cares results in photos like these. He simply has no idea that it’s not cute for the FFK to joke about “whatever will the peasants do when this tennis match is over?!” The future king, a man in his forties, who we’ve been told over and over again has been preparing for this role and learning everything he can? It’s ridiculous.
He is who he is and he is totally ill-suited to the role. Even if we believed he was in fact diligently training for the past decade (lol), he can’t change his personality, and his personality suuuuuucks.
“The last time I saw you we were having a curry, now you’ve got a proper job!”
A proper job. Dying to know what this lazy racist assh*le thinks is a proper job. Also want to know who he thinks do the not proper jobs?
I’m not explaining this well, but that statement feels really racist to me.
Same guy that made a point of asking the harpist at his wedding if she heard his dumb joke about Harry having to sing or something if she didn’t show up.
Yeah, that is weird that he harkened back to that curry reference. It’s the first thing I thought of, too. So either:
A/ he doesn’t know that it was seen as racist and just plain tacky, or
B/ he knows that but he doesn’t care.
Yuck.
It makes me think that he doesn’t follow any of the news about himself or actually read articles or comments. I’m sure he wants a daily tally of the number articles written about him, and he wants to know if he’s being mentioned more or less than Harry and Meghan, but what was said, how he was received, any notes on what the public liked or didn’t like, found offensive or engaging, he doesn’t care. Is ANYONE, ANYWHERE telling him when he does something wrong? Does he not ask anyone about how he can improve? Does he not pay any attention to what things seem to work well and drive positive engagement vs what things either slip through the cracks of public attention or drive negative engagement? Even if he thought the curry joke was no big deal and he “didn’t mean it like that,” it was a big thing for awhile and people perceived it as tone deaf and offensive, so why bring it up years later for no reason whatsoever unless no one ever told him that it didn’t go over well?
I, like most people who work, am constantly looking for feedback so I can improve. It would be difficult for me to avoid feedback. If I pay any attention to the people around me at my job, I can sense what is going well and what is going poorly and how I’m being perceived and received. And then because I work with other people, I hear about what they think about how well we did, and I hear their ideas and suggestions for how we can improve. How is he avoiding all of that? People would have to actively work hard to make sure they were never giving feedback, or always giving the exact same neutral/positive, inane type of meaningless feedback.
@AmyToo, even if he read every single word written about him, I don’t think it would necessarily change things. He is who he is, so his “jokes” will always slip out without him even realizing how inappropriate and unfunny they are.
“The last time I saw you we were having a curry, now you’ve got a proper job!” William told him
Uhh sorry, but was is the joke here? Not even asking if it’s funny, just…wth this doesn’t even meet the comprehensible thought level for me…
@Layde: Ugh, terrible. Peter Crouch is employed by the BBC to do that podcast. He was working that day.
It’s like he thinks eating curry is so funny (and that other people think eating curry is funny?) that he brought it up years after the fact…What a weirdo “remember that time we ate curry?? Hahaha so crazy!!” Yuck : (
Maybe he’s so rarely funny each joke’s memorable? I don’t think he has much of a genuine sense of humour. If he’s funny, it’s probably accidental.
Billy is the last person to be making jokes about people having a real job. He truly is obtuse and doesn’t understand what he looks like saying that.
He has zero self-awareness and is, in short, a complete arse.
@Nic, right?! I’m sorry, I know that overall none of this is funny because of how important his role is, but it is *hilarious* to me that he’s too stupid to realize how absolutely asinine it is for him, OF ALL PEOPLE, to say that about someone else; William’s had his entire life supported by taxpayers and has never done a day of actual work in his life. He has a fancy title, but he’s still a layabout on welfare. And is too dim to see it. Incredible.
Omg i howled at this 🤣🤣🤣
William’s engagement was totally drowned out by Harry and Meghan being in NY yesterday. And the blame for that falls squarely on the press and KP.
“What about Baldingham?”
Please make that a permanent feature! LMAO!
Baldimort “jokes” about Covid, “jokes” about POCs getting attacked by security. Real comedian there, har har har.
And then that was that royal train tour in the midst of a pandemic that William wanted. And he and Kate greeting people with no masks and even giggling and roasting marshmallows when they got off one of the stops. So out of touch.
So I gather he fixed all the racism in football then?
Or is it all better after he declared his boredom with it?
I’m surprised he didn’t have a pint of beer in front of him. Maybe they should have let him have one. Maybe then he would have at least pretended to be interested.
Meh. Call me when you meet with the cast of “Ted Lasso” Willie. Till then? Meh. 😏
So Peter is still ahead of Willy, cause Peter has a job and Willy is still playing at working. These pictures aren’t kind to him. His inner evil is outside his face in full force
Please do a post on Harry’s tie as part of the Travalyst initiative with Google.
William, football, gosh he really doesn’t even bother to try.
I do like the open minded attitude of CBers. And the total lack of generalisations.😀
How does that leather taste?
Oh yes, because eating a curry equates doing nothing with your life, rich coming from the ultimate grifter.
Also, William asking Peter Crouch for tips on how he keeps a relationship with fans smacks of him trying to figure out how he can be most popular and keep his own deranged fanbase obsessed with him. “What is it about the model here that’s worked so well? What’s the best practice that can be replicated elsewhere?” … I.e., “Please give me advice on how I can have a fanbase too.”
TBH, I think the whole football thing is performative; “Look! Working-class people, we like and do the same things. Give us brownie-points .” A few attendances at some high profile matches, pretending to be mates with footballers and it’s called “work.”
Incidentally, the supposedly impressive charity work that he and his family do pales into insignificance when compared to the activism of some of those footballers – who haven’t always been millionaires and have a better understanding of how hard life is for some in the UK . https://endchildfoodpoverty.org/
Apparently Dulwich Hamlet are quite the social warriors; “Dulwich Hamlet hope anti-homophobia in football campaign is blueprint to others at top of game”https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/feb/17/dulwich-hamlet-anti-homophobia-campaign-stonewall-fc
Another opportunity for William to score off the work of others?
Well its not like he’s actually going to do work, right?
Wait….Who is this person???
He needs to just shave it all. Listen to great advice Will because I bet someone has already offered it
In fairness, there’s very little that William, or any single individual, could do to “reform” football. It’s a sport worth billions, overseen by inept and corrupt governing bodies. It’s also, in many ways, just about *the* most accessible sport in the UK, at least until you start looking at the EPL.
Which is why it’s an easy thing for him to associate himself with. It’s out of his hands is an easy excuse. He doesn’t have to actually show any effort. The biggest effort he’s shown was walking out of the Euro finals without publicly acknowledging the winners. I think it was 2018 when he made the trip to the Middle East and the BM was all about Billy Boy making it his mission to solve the Middle East peace crisis. It’s been crickets since then for any actual words and work that I’ve seen.
What’s with that scowling look on his face. LOL.
World health, vaccines >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> football.
I am confused how the Royal office exists and why they don’t a better job of strategic planning for William and Kate. Harry & Meghan are running circles around William and Kate.
When you think about the last year of engagements, the path Harry & Meghan are following is very smart.
– Few events that are planned very well.
– Always a tie into helping others
– Donations given directly to the charity.
This NYC event was brilliant. First day of meetings were with politicians. 2nd day meeting with children in Harlem and giving money to the school. This immediately followed by lunch and also giving money to help a female minority owner. Today’s event is a culminating event focused on giving vaccines to countries that can’t afford to purchase them for their residents. Some countries are even part of the Commonwealth and the British royals have done very little support to assist with covid vaccines.
Meghan and Harry can now return back to the children and relax having made a greater impact globally on this one visit than the hundreds done in the UK.
If you think about Princess Diana, her biggest moment during her visit to NYC was her visit to Harlem and being with children in need. Harry shares that instinct with his mom. I looked back at William & Kate’s trip in 2014 and they steered away from Harlem.
@Denise, I don’t have an answer for you but totally agree with everything you said and you articulated the absurdity of it so well! My only guess is that he’s always purposely surrounded himself with sycophants like Jason Knauf who will never stand up to him and tell him the truth.
But considering the way things are going for the Sussexes, his hand might be forced to change things a bit, because he cannot tolerate Harry looking better than him. (Joke is on him, though, because *nothing* he could ever do will make him look superior to Harry— but he can try!) The fact that he just disappeared for a two-month summer vacation sure doesn’t make it look like he’s interested in upping his game, so idk.
@Denise, Agree with your post. Kate did go to Harlem in 2014 though. She went there to wrap Christmas presents. Didn’t see anything where she brought anything except herself. While she thought hot pink was a great color for the 9/11 memorial site-she opted to wear black to the Harlem visit. Apparently, one of the charity workers wasn’t having it with her laziness and told her to keep wrapping-I’m on the side of the charity worker. If Kate is there to do something, she should be doing it. In the story there is a vine? that shows Kate’s reaction. Ms. Never Puts A Foot Wrong(LOL) manages to get Face Putting Wrong again.
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/kate-middleton-rolls-eyes-bossy-charity-worker-harlem-article-1.2042903
Too late to edit. This was three years after being a married in and thirteen years after dating William. But, sure, RR’s call her lynchpin, savior, rock, peacemaker and other inaccurate adjectives.
There is a gif made of Kate rolling her eyes at the charity worker asking her to get back to wrapping presents. She looks ignorant and dismissive.
Right. I wasn’t buying the quotes from people saying it wasn’t a big deal or a Princess shoudn’t be spoken to that way. Using it as a photo op/engagement and rolling your eyes at a charity worker who expects you to do what you said you’re there for, is disrespectful Not cute or funny.