My boy is not a junkie, says Princess Michael
By Caroline Davies
(Filed: 25/06/2003) Telegraph
Princess Michael of Kent has spoken of her dismay that her son, Lord
Frederick Windsor, has been branded "a junkie" over his
experimentation with cocaine.
"He's down as a drug-user, but he's not," she said in a highly
personal interview. "You just have to watch him in action. Freddie
isn't a junkie."
Lord Frederick, 24, who has just finished four years at Oxford and is
now going to law school, publicly admitted using the drug after being
photographed leaving a party in a dishevelled state.
But his mother insists he resisted the temptation of drugs for years,
and that she had tried to emphasise the dangers of drug abuse to both
her son and her daughter, Lady Gabriella, 22, who is now studying at
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
"I went through a lot of trouble with the drug thing because it's
every mother's worst fear," she said in an interview with Hello!
magazine.
"So, just before he was due to go to Eton, when he was 12 or 13, I
took Freddie and Ella to a drug rehabilitation centre to see for
themselves.
"When we were there, what looked like an old woman came up and told
us, 'I'm 17. I haven't got a tooth in my head. I have had two
children I've never seen. Do you want to be like me?'
"Both children were sick in the garden when we left, they were so
shocked." She then took them to Scotland Yard to see what drugs
looked like so they could recognise them. "Ella was freaked out, anti-
drugs - she's a health nut and eats raw vegetables.
"And Freddie was logically and academically anti-drugs and bored all
his friends to death in his first year at university about it. But
because he hadn't tried drugs he was teased for not knowing what he
was talking about.
"Finally he gave in and agreed to try it, but there were two boys who
heard and shopped him to the press.
"That's my son's drug record. That's their 'admitted drug user or
abuser'," she said. "He asked me what to say when the press rang up
and I told him, 'Mea culpa. I tried it, I'm sorry and I'm never going
to try it again'."
She said her son was "tough".
"He has got to know what it's all about and he's his own person. He's
very well in his own skin."
Princess Michael, who celebrates 25 years of marriage to Prince
Michael of Kent next month, also spoke of their shock that they will
be forced to leave the Kensington Palace apartment in which they have
lived, rent-free, since their marriage.
The Queen, who had agreed to let the couple remain there for life,
bowed to pressure from MPs earlier this year and told them they must
move in seven years' time, during which she will pay the market rent
for the apartment, thought to be around £150,000 a year.
The couple said that when they inquired whether they would be able to
stay in Kensington Palace after the seven years if they managed to
find the rent, they were told no.
They will then have to move into their 17th-century Gloucestershire
manor house, Nether Lypiatt, which is thought to be valued at around
£3 million.
"Having been given the apartment for life, I assumed we would live
the rest of our days there," said the Princess. She added that they
had been planning to sell Nether Lypiatt for income, possibly to
their son.
"The big shock is that we've lost our old age pension because we
can't do that any more," she said.
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Personally, I think that Freddie has been the shining star in the Royal Family (education-wise): Honor Student at Eton, Oxford, now Law School...but this article is what I call classic denial