KEY advisers to the Prince of Wales are helping Tesco, Britain's biggest
supermarket chain, which will this week announce a huge expansion of its
organic food range and the creation of Britain's first professor of organic
farming.
The collaboration, to be formally announced at The Savoy hotel on Tuesday,
was agreed after senior Tesco staff visited the prince's organic farm at
Highgrove. It represents a triumph for the prince, who, for years, has used
Highgrove to try to prove the commercial viability of organic farming.
A spokesman for Duchy Originals, his organic food range, said yesterday:
"He is delighted. When he started, organic was seen as quite off-the-wall, just
for people who wore open-toed sandals and ate beans. The prince was
visionary in what he wanted to do. More and more people are now beginning
to understand what he was saying back then.
"People want to know more about food, where it comes from and how it is
made." Senior Tesco staff visited Highgrove in February and June. They were
shown around by David Wilson, the prince's farm manager, and Patrick
Holden, the director of the Soil Association, of which the prince is patron.
A Tesco spokesman said: "Everyone was extremely impressed and went
away with pages and pages of notes. We learnt a huge amount. We will be
able to plan properly how to meet demand, do our own codes of practice and
brief suppliers." Tesco now hopes to become the biggest seller of organic
produce in Britain, with at least 100 organic products in every one of its 680
stores.
It will increase its organic range from 550 lines to 750, offering everything
from gin made with organic fruit to organic baby food and curry. The chain
will use distinctive blue-and-green packaging to make it easier for shoppers to
spot organic food.
The produce of Duchy Originals will feature among the new lines and will also
be served at The Savoy when Tim Mason, the marketing director of Tesco,
announces the new commitment to organic food. Tesco, which currently
stocks Duchy Originals lemon refresher drink, will now start stocking its
organic bread, biscuits, lemon curd and marmalade.
The deal is estimated to be worth nearly £100,000 a year to the Prince of
Wales Charitable Foundation, which takes all the profits from Duchy
Originals. The charity is now almost certain to receive far more than the
£400,000 made by Duchy Originals last year. Tesco also plans to donate
£450,000 over five years to Newcastle University to fund research into
organic farming.
The university will use the money to create a research base, likely to be called
the Tesco Centre for Organic Agriculture. It will also install Dr Carlo Leifert
as its first professor of ecological agriculture in what is believed to be the first
post of its kind created at a British university.
Dr Leifert, who is currently based at Aberdeen University, said: "I am very
keen on the momentum that supermarkets have developed towards
underpinning UK production. They can control whether or not a food
production industry takes off." Tesco now hopes to add an instant £50 million
to its organic sales, boosting them to £250 million by the end of the financial
year.
This would nearly double Tesco's takings for organic produce, which stood at
£140 million last year. Projected organic food sales for this year are £546
million. They are expected to reach more than £1 billion by 2002, despite the
comments of Sir John Krebs, the chairman of the Food Standards Agency.
He said this month that there was no evidence that organic food was safer or
more nutritious than conventionally grown produce. The role of Highgrove in
persuading Tesco to commit itself so heavily to organic produce will give the
prince particular satisfaction.
Mr Holden said: "Nobody will be more delighted if the organic practices at
Highgrove influence commercial practice throughout the country. That is what
he wanted to do when he set up the farm."
~*~
Mountbatten goes under hammer(Electronic Telegraph)
By Catherine Milner, Arts Correspondent
A PORTRAIT of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the companion piece to one
which hangs in the Queen's bedroom, is being sold by the artist Anthony
Christian.
The portrait, drawn two years before Lord Mountbatten was killed by the
IRA in 1979, was the Earl's favourite portrait of himself, according to the
artist, even though their relationship got off to an unpromising start. The last
Viceroy of India invited Mr Christian to lunch at his home at Broadlands,
Hampshire, before embarking on the picture - but the artist declined.
He said: "I never ever dine with people I don't know very well and never go
to formal functions. Mountbatten was used to people who bow and scrape -
but I don't bow and scrape". Lord Mountbatten asked if he would prefer to
bring his own lunch and Mr Christian agreed to bring a fruit salad in an
earthenware bowl.
He said: "When I arrived the butler took my fruit salad and I was taken to
where Mountbatten was having a swim and we had a chat." When lunch
arrived, Mountbatten was served by butlers and ate a meal made up of "foods
coated in aspic".
"When the main course arrived I turned my fruit salad on to a plate and
started eating it." Mr Christian said the Earl then admitted he was envious of
the artist's meal. "He was very formal and I wanted to break down his
formality a bit. I definitely succeeded. We had a very long conversation about
cosmic things. We established a trusting and warm rapport."
The result was a pair of portraits, one full face and one profile, which were
offered to Jeremy Bradford, Mountbatten's godson, who had commissioned
them. He chose the full face picture for the Queen. Lord Mountbatten
approved of the decision. Christian said: "He told me that out of 150 portraits
taken of him these were the ones he really liked.
The study is now being sold by Philip Mould at his gallery in London for
£2,500. Mr Mould said: "Portraits of Mountbatten from life are not common.
The look of patrician repose in this picture is reminiscent of profile portraits of
Venetian doges.
"The portrait would lend itself to public display - a club or institution
associated with Mountbatten would be perfect."
~*~
Princess in link to murder at
Alpine resort (Sunday UK Times)
Maurice Chittenden and Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas
IT WAS meant to be a new start
for Princess Stephanie of
Monaco, Europe's most troubled
royal. She moved into the
mountains above the
Mediterranean principality four
years ago to live a simpler
existence, selling children's
clothes in a ski resort, away from
the excesses and intrigues of
palace life.
It has ended, however, with the
35-year-old royal being dragged
into an underworld murder
inquiry.
For her loyal Monégasque
subjects, who have seen the
princess expelled from her
finishing school, fail as a pop
singer, enjoy affairs with her bodyguards and have three children
out of wedlock, this may be taking downward mobility one step
too far.
A suspected cocaine dealer was gunned down in southern
France on August 4 in a gangland-style execution.
Detectives at the scene were astonished when the victim's
tearful girlfriend drove up to the murder scene in a £20,000 red
Chevrolet pick-up truck they have traced to Stephanie.
Virginie Tereberrou lives in the same
chalet buildings in the Alpine village of
Auron as the princess and the two are
close friends.
The resort is 80 kilometres from Monaco,
the tiny principality ruled for more than
700 years by the Grimaldi family in the
face of invasions by the French, Spanish
and Italians.
Its patriarch, Prince Rainier, has been
continually embarrassed by his youngest daughter since her
teenage years as a wild child.
French police said last week that they would like to interview
the royal dubbed "la princesse bohémienne" by the Paris press
as a witness to the circumstances surrounding the murder, but
her diplomatic immunity makes it difficult for them to do so.
The princess's lawyers say she has nothing to hide and is
willing to talk to detectives by appointment but will not go to a
police station.
The murder last month of Eskander Laribi, 25, a Tunisian-born
petty criminal jailed for a few months as a murder suspect in
1995, may have been linked to cocaine deals or to his
complicated love life.
Two assassins on a motorbike shot him twice in the head and
four times in the back. His pockets were stuffed with £5,000 in
banknotes.
Tereberrou, 24, lives with Simon Giovanangelli, who runs a bar
in Auron called Le Kilt where the princess and Laribi were both
regulars. The princess even worked on occasion behind the bar.
On the day of the murder Tereberrou borrowed the princess's
pick-up. She has told detectives that she planned to buy a
kennel for her dog.
When she could not raise Laribi, who had gone to a
body-building club, on his mobile phone she set out to find him,
only to come across his blood-spattered body, covered by a
sheet, lying in a road in St Augustin, a Nice suburb.
A senior detective in the murder investigation said: "If the
princess had been French we would have questioned her. But it
is not possible because she is protected by her royal
immunity."
Neither the princess nor any of her bodyguards were at her
six-bedroomed chalet on the outskirts of Auron last week.
At his bar, Giovanangelli, 58, said: "Princess Stephanie was a
good friend of mine and came in here all the time. She used to
work behind the bar, but three weeks ago we had a fight and
she had to be asked to leave."
He refused to elaborate on the reasons for the argument.
The princess moved to the village in 1996 after a bitter divorce
from Daniel Ducruet, a former bodyguard with whom she had
two children before they were married.
The couple split up after Ducruet was photographed having sex
beside a swimming pool with a model who had once held the
title of Miss Topless Belgium.
Stephanie became pregnant for a third time by another minder,
but the relationship did not last.
It was the latest twist in an unhappy life. In 1982 Stephanie was
in the car with her mother, Princess Grace, when it careered off
a twisting French road high above the coast. The former
Hollywood actress was killed and her daughter suffered a
broken neck.
Stephanie has since had to deny rumours that she was behind
the wheel at the time of the accident.
She has feuded with her older sister Princess Caroline; the two
have not spoken for two years. Stephanie stayed away when
Caroline married Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a German
cousin of the Queen, in January last year.
The Grimaldis had hoped the move to Auron would ease
Stephanie into a calmer lifestyle and remove her from the
spotlight. It was not to be.
Thierry Lacoste, the princess's attorney, denied that the
princess knew the murder victim. "Auron is a small place and
the princess knows most people. This woman took her car for
the afternoon," he said.
"I have been in touch with the police. They said they did not
need to talk to the princess. She has nothing to hide and will
speak to them by appointment."
Additional reporting: Sylvie Deroche
~*~
Prince William becomes US fashion icon(Yahoo: Ananova)
Prince William has become a fashion icon - he has been listed in the Top Ten Best Dressed list by
America's biggest-selling magazine.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was a permanent fixture in People magazine's best dressed list. but the
teenage prince looks likely to become a regular in the list for years to come .
The list also includes Jennifer Aniston, Freddie Prinze Jr, Britney Spears, George Clooney, Samuel L
Jackson, Pierce Brosnan, Charlize Theron, Kevin Spacey, and Heather Locklear.
Friends star Aniston is described as: "like one of those cardboard dolls you could put anything on and it would look good."
In the Worst Dressed category, both Bruce Willis and Chrstina Aguilera lead the way.
People advises Willis to stop wearing baseball hats. "He looks far more distinguished and intelligent without them", it says.
The magazine also tells Christina Aguilera to stop showing off her belly button so much.
Also in the worst dressed list top ten are: Portia de Rossi, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lucy Liu, Renee Zellweger, Lara Flynn
Boyle, Lil' Kim, Lauren Holly and Bebe Neuwirth.
New for this year, People has included a Least Dressed List, topped by Jennifer Lopez after she wore a chiffon Versace gown
to the Grammy Awards that was later copied by Trey Parker, of South Park fame, for the Oscars.