Blur – "Stereotypes" (1995)

She's most accommodating

When she's in her lingerie

British newspapers put American newspapers to shame.  

A case in point: the UK’s Daily Mail, which recently ran a story with a headline that tops any headline I've seen in an American paper:

(Top that, New York Times!  Eat your heart out, Washington Post!)

According to the story, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana’s marriage went south relatively quickly after their storybook wedding in 1981.  

By 1989, the Prince was getting his leg over with his old girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles – the two were married in 2005 – while Diana seems to have been hooking up with James Hewitt, a dashing young British Army officer.

Charles and Diana in 1981

But although she and Charles hadn’t shared a bed for some time, Diana hadn’t entirely given up on their marriage.

So when she and the Prince were invited to Camilla’s sister’s 40th birthday party, she decided to attend – much to the chagrin of Camilla, who allegedly shouted “Why did that f*cking b*tch have to come?” to the hostess of the party when she got word that Diana would be accompanying Charles.

Little did Camilla know that she had nothing to worry about.  

Earlier that day, Diana had gone shopping for lingerie at Harrod’s, the famed London department store.  She hoped that some sexy knickers would capture her hubby’s interest.  

Camilla as a debutante in 1965

Unfortunately, it was not to be.  From the Daily Mail:

Now she stood in front of her own full-length dressing room mirror, gazing at her reflection.  The exotic lingerie she had bought that afternoon was more daring than her usual ensemble – briefer, naughtier, more provocative.  This was her desperate, possibly naive, gamble to rekindle the all-but-extinct sexual passion in her marriage.

She was realistic about the competition.  Camilla may have been 14 years older than she was, but Diana knew the seasoned Mrs. Parker Bowles had a comfortably bosomed allure that Charles, apparently, found irresistible. 

Camilla today – nice chapeau!

(How about that last phrase: “[T]he seasoned Mrs. Parker Bowles had a comfortably bosomed allure that Charles, apparently, found irresistible.”  You have to admit that the Daily Mail has a way with words.)  

At that moment, as she would tearfully relate the following day to a confidante, the prince looked in, surveyed his lingerie-clad wife up and down and declared witheringly, “You look ridiculous.”  The close friend, an intimate of Diana who has never spoken out before, recalls her despair at being dismissed so coldly.  “Those three words shattered her,” says the confidante. “They changed the whole momentum of the evening.”

(“You look ridiculous.”  Really?  What a d*ck!)

Knowing the way the male mind works from personal experience, my first reaction to this story was that Princess Diana should have done her shopping at Frederick’s of Hollywood instead of Harrod’s.

But I spent some time on the Harrod’s website.  I’m not sure what kind of lingerie Harrod’s was stocking in 1989, but the stuff they are selling today is pretty hot.  

For example, one of the brands Harrod’s offers is the aptly named Agent Provocateur, which is one of sexiest high-end lingerie lines out there.  

Agent Provocateur undies from Harrod’s

It’s hard for me imagine Charles not becoming at least a little hot and bothered by seeing his 28-year-old wife strutting her stuff in Agent Provocateur undies.  Obviously, I’m underestimating the “comfortably bosomed allure” of Camilla, Duchess of Kent. 

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“Stereotypes” is the opening track to Blur’s fourth studio album,  The Great Escape, which was released in 1995.

Blur and Oasis were the two most successful “Britpop” groups of the mid-nineties.  (Other Britpop bands included Pulp, Suede, and The Verve.)

Here’s “Stereotypes”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: