{"id":318803,"date":"2025-08-05T03:38:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T03:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/318803\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T03:38:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T03:38:17","slug":"eden-confidential-why-alison-can-no-longer-cast-sussexes-lookalikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/318803\/","title":{"rendered":"EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Why Alison can no longer cast Sussexes&#8217; lookalikes&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Bafta-winning photographer Alison Jackson \u2013 who specialises in amusing images featuring lookalikes of the rich, famous and powerful \u2013 is planning to stage a show at the <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/edinburgh\/index.html\" id=\"mol-d0cf1530-7175-11f0-96cd-65a4623b39ba\" rel=\"noopener\">Edinburgh<\/a> Fringe Festival later this month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She has, however, encountered a serious problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The show was due to include doppelgangers of the Duke and <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/tvshowbiz\/meghan-markle\/index.html\" id=\"mol-d0add190-7175-11f0-96cd-65a4623b39ba\" rel=\"noopener\">Duchess of Sussex<\/a>, but Jackson has failed to cast actors to play them with little more than a fortnight until the curtain goes up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I have a couple of &#8216;Prince Williams&#8217; who&#8217;ve come forward and they look quite good, but no &#8216;Meghan&#8217; or &#8216;Harry&#8217; has turned up,&#8217; she tells me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The artist, 65, claims this is because the Sussexes have become such toxic figures that no one wants to play them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I think that people don&#8217;t like Meghan, they don&#8217;t trust her and they think she&#8217;s an operator who sucks everything she can out of Harry,&#8217; Jackson claims. She explains that her lookalikes &#8216;tend to relate to&#8217; the person they are playing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Jackson blames Harry&#8217;s explosive interview with the BBC in May after he lost a legal challenge over his taxpayer-funded security in Britain. The California-based prince said the King &#8216;won&#8217;t speak to me because of this security stuff&#8217;, but that he did not want to fight any more and did &#8216;not know how much longer my father has&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Jackson tells me: &#8216;He&#8217;s gone too far, because every time he does a TV interview he takes some dig at King Charles, which is below the belt and beyond the pale and people don&#8217;t like it. He implied that his father might die.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-b9253fb068dc3564\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919317-14970273-image-a-1_1754341686388.jpg\" height=\"951\" width=\"634\" alt=\"Alison Jackson is known for her humourous photographs featuring celebrity lookalikes\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Alison Jackson is known for her humourous photographs featuring celebrity lookalikes<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-5f5f3dddf39bc4a6\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919329-14970273-image-a-2_1754341690234.jpg\" height=\"951\" width=\"634\" alt=\"Harry and Meghan pictured last year. Jackson says their drop in popularity has scared off people playing their lookalikes\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Harry and Meghan pictured last year. Jackson says their drop in popularity has scared off people playing their lookalikes<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She previously had lookalikes of Harry, 40, and Meghan, who turned 44 yesterday, but says &#8216;they now won&#8217;t come forward&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Jackson adds: &#8216;As Meghan gets more and more assertive, the lookalikes disappear. They&#8217;ve probably all cut their hair short and look different.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">It will be a case of On His Majesty&#8217;s Secret Service! King Charles is seeking a \u00a355,000-a-year security head to vet his own staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The successful candidate must identify any security risks among workers. An advert says the &#8216;senior personnel security manager&#8217; will be based at Buckingham Palace, but will oversee &#8216;security services across multiple royal residences&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Love is in the air for Lord Brocket&#8217;s son\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-b08d290680f1e100\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919291-14970273-image-a-3_1754341695166.jpg\" height=\"452\" width=\"634\" alt=\"William Nall-Cain is 6ft8, making his lawyer wife Christy Boulet seem very petite indeed\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">William Nall-Cain is 6ft8, making his lawyer wife Christy Boulet seem very petite indeed<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-16458e7f67835438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919605-14970273-image-a-1_1754342900713.jpg\" height=\"845\" width=\"634\" alt=\"The happy couple on their big day\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">The happy couple on their big day\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">At 6ft 8in, William Nall-Cain was always going to find it a tall order to choose a bride who could measure up to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Happily, the son of former I&#8217;m A Celebrity star Lord Brocket has met his match in Christy Boulet, a lawyer from Puerto Rico where his mother, former model Isabel Lorenzo Brocket, was also born.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">In a picture posted online, William, 34, towers over his new wife at their wedding in the Caribbean island&#8217;s capital, San Juan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;There is no one else on this planet who makes me feel like anything in this life is possible, and like the luckiest man alive,&#8217; William has said of his bride.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Earlier this year, I disclosed that his sister, Antalya, had separated from her husband, Prince Alexander von Preussen, less than five years after their wedding near Brocket Hall, her ancestral home in Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">\u00a0Sir Grayson&#8217;s all fired up\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">He made his name with ceramics depicting child abuse and sado-masochism before being embraced by the Establishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">And Sir Grayson Perry is sick of rich and famous Leftie-types posing as revolutionaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;One of the things that absolutely infuriates me is millionaire cultural celebrities pretending they&#8217;re outsider rebels,&#8217; declares the cross-dressing potter, 65.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Who&#8217;s in the Spice Girls&#8217; group chat?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The Spice Girls once sang that &#8216;friendship never ends&#8217;, but it can clearly become strained over time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, has revealed Victoria Beckham and Geri Halliwell are excluded from some of their WhatsApp chat groups.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;There are subgroups within the group,&#8217; Mel C admits in an interview Down Under.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I definitely know there is a chat group that doesn&#8217;t contain me, but somewhere else we keep Ginger or Posh out. Like all friendship groups, we have many ways of communicating.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Chisholm, 51, who was the only one of the four other Spice Girls to attend Mel B&#8217;s second wedding to Rory McPhee in Morocco at the weekend, also admits she regrets not holding on to her outfits from the pop group&#8217;s heyday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Julie dresses as she likes it for birthday bash\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-fda487b668bdd30c\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919287-14970273-The_Countess_of_Sandwich_in_fancy_dress_at_Powderham_Castle_near-m-6_175434232593.jpeg\" height=\"809\" width=\"634\" alt=\"The Countess of Sandwich in fancy dress at Powderham Castle near Exeter\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">The Countess of Sandwich in fancy dress at Powderham Castle near Exeter\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Usually seen wearing Lycra while performing yoga poses at her husband&#8217;s Mapperton estate in Dorset, the Countess of Sandwich opted for a medieval look at a fellow aristocrat&#8217;s ancestral home at the weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">American-born Julie Montagu, 51, wore a red velvet gown for the Earl of Devon&#8217;s fancy dress birthday party at Powderham Castle near Exeter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The bash had Shakespeare&#8217;s pastoral comedy As You Like It for its theme. &#8216;I took it very seriously,&#8217; the countess says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She and her husband, Luke, the 12th Earl of Sandwich, have been running the family&#8217;s Mapperton estate since 2016, with wellness retreats among her initiatives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">A qualified yoga instructor, Julie, became the Countess of Sandwich after the death of her father-in-law, 81, in February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Kirstie&#8217;s parenting hoo-haa\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-4fa468dda966fe0d\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/100919295-14970273-image-a-5_1754341710379.jpg\" height=\"864\" width=\"634\" alt=\"Kirstie Allsopp has been complaining about children having too much screen time... on a small screen of her own\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Kirstie Allsopp has been complaining about children having too much screen time&#8230; on a small screen of her own<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Location, Location, Location star Kirstie Allsopp is aghast at a sorry display of modern parenting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I&#8217;m staying in a hotel in Switzerland, just had breakfast next to an English couple with one child, probably aged five,&#8217; says the television presenter, 53.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;He ate his breakfast watching an iPad on the table in front of him,&#8217; the presenter complains on X.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She goes on to ask her 431,800 followers: &#8216;When are people going to wake up to how wrong this is?&#8217; Kirstie, who has two teenage sons with her husband, property developer Ben Andersen, as well as two adult stepsons, adds: &#8216;This is absurd. If they can&#8217;t be bothered to engage their child in conversation at the table when they don&#8217;t have to cook or wash up, then what hope is there?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Her comments prompted a mixed response online, with some parents and teachers noting the &#8216;damage&#8217; caused to children by excessive screen time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Others were less sympathetic, prompting Kirstie to respond: &#8216;It&#8217;s quite interesting to note that the vast majority of abuse is from men.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bafta-winning photographer Alison Jackson \u2013 who specialises in amusing images featuring lookalikes of the rich, famous and powerful&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,92,7721,7719,368,7718,7720,1281,447,7710,519,448,7711],"class_list":{"0":"post-318803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-duchess-of-sussex","11":"tag-duke-of-sussex","12":"tag-femail","13":"tag-harry","14":"tag-meghan","15":"tag-meghan-markle","16":"tag-prince-harry","17":"tag-royal-families","18":"tag-royal-family","19":"tag-royals","20":"tag-uk-royal-family"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114974078445963850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}