Pippa Middleton is Kate's Maid of Honour: Has Prince William picked the right sister?

Add to My Stories Even before last weeks announcement that Pippa Middleton had been given the name-in-lights, glamour role of maid of honour at the forthcoming Royal wedding, she had found that men were falling at her feet.
The glossy brunette an equally attractive but more feline version of her elder sister has become the most eligible girl on the Chelsea dance floor.Shes very sexy, exuberant and cheerful, and, of course, being a future Queens sister gives flirting with her an extra frisson, says one admirer. Boys have been hoping that its not too late to charm her and get an invitation to the wedding.

Sister act: Pippa (right) is thought to be more outgoing than sibling and Kate but, for the moment, is living for her sister

Fun-loving: Pippa at a party, swathed in toilet paperBut South-West Londons socially ambitious young bucks can dream on. Because, for now, perfect Pippa is spoken for.Friends agree that Alex Loudon, a square-jawed, 30-year-old Old Etonian and former England cricketer, looks like he would make a dream date for her in Westminster Abbey on April 29.Like all Pippas boyfriends, hes squeaky clean, handsome, and from a moneyed family who are easy to locate in Debretts.Since the engagement, 27-year-old Pippa (christened Phillippa Charlotte, and known as Pip to her family) has spent much of her time helping to look after the future royal bride.A source close to Prince William said: Pippas an ambitious girl and more outgoing than Kate, but for now shes living her life for her sister.Its all Kate, Kate, Kate for the moment, because shes her closest ally and, genuinely, they are best friends. But even if they werent, Kate would struggle to trust anyone who wasnt family.Unlike Kate, who has not been working, Pippa has a part-time position running The Part! y Times, an online magazine she created to promote the products of her parents Party Pieces website.This role is said to involve two days work in a London office and one at the Party Pieces barn in Yattendon, a few miles from the Berkshire village where her parents live.Pippa has said she was keen to set up The Party Times because she had read English at Edinburgh and had always enjoyed writing, but since then she has enlisted some journalistic help.Her design for The Party Times is very girly and sugary, with cartoon bubbles, pink type and butterflies fluttering across the page. In Pippas online world, cherubic toddlers are pictured having pillow fights, and cupcakes are decorated with icing daisies.

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For the other two days of the week, she has been working for Table Talk, an events organising company clearly savvy enough to know that giving Pippa flexibility now will lend them lots of publicity in the long run.While Table Talk arrange swanky parties from their base in Camberwell, Pippas magazine suggests themes for childrens birthday extravaganzas, such as the Groovy Gruffalo Party or perhaps the more timely Tangled Princess Party, complete with a decorate your own crown game and a tiara hunt.Party planning in all its manifestations is very much the Middleton family business. Parents Michael and Carole both worked for British Airways, and in-flight food containers seem to have partly inspired Party Pieces individual party food trays are a company trademark.Caroles success with the Party Pieces website founded in the early 1980s when she discovere! d that o ther mothers wanted to buy her party bags rather than bother to make them up themselves helped pay the school fees.

Flames old and new: Current beau Alex Loudon (left) fits the model of Pippa's previous boyfriends like Charlie Gilkes (right) and Simon younger (below). All are squeaky-clean and from moneyed families

Little brother James, 24, seems literally to be hanging onto his mothers apron strings: he quit Edinburgh University early to set up his Cake Kit Company.
As he wrote in Tatler: I have great childhood memories of my mother baking cakes ... from these fond memories the Cake Kit Company was born ... I will be wearing a hairnet and my baking clothes one day, and a suit and tie the next. For her part, Pippa genuinely seems party-mad. How fitting that every Burns Night it is Pippa, accompanied by bagpipes, who carries the haggis into the local pub, the Old Boot Inn at the village of Stanford Dingley in Berkshire, to kick off the celebrations.Described by a friend of Williams as a party girl who loves a good night out and a good house party, Pippa always manages to be the one whos in charge.Last September, to raise funds for a friends charity, Too Many Women, in aid of breast cancer research, she organised an Ibiza Party in the garden of her parents house in Bucklebury.We had about 95 people and really good music it was quite cool Ibiza chic, with lots of good dancing, she explained.On Thursday, Pippa and James were at another party for the charity, an Eyes Wide Shut Valentines Masquerade at Public, a nightclub on the Kings Road. The invitation boasted cheeky lapdancing.Holly Branson, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and Chelsy Davy were all ! there, t oo; the Middleton siblings have been absorbed into the young royals set.Its a set that suits Pippa. One acquaintance who has seen her in action at house parties says: She loves getting everyone to play party games. Shes a very jolly hockey sticks kind of girl. Shell be the one suggesting charades, organising people into teams, and cutting up bits of paper.Famously, she was once pictured at a party, having wrapped herself in swathes of toilet paper.The acquaintance continues: Pippas quite bossy in a smiley way she definitely sits on the drawing room throne.And there have been many drawing rooms for her to reign supreme over, because Pippas crowd is often even more blue-blooded than Kates, if thats possible.
After prep school at Pangbourne and Marlborough College, Pippas days at Edinburgh University led her into the heart of an aristocratic crowd.So those drawing rooms might be at Alnwick (the Northumberland castle that served as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films), seat of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, parents of her good friend and ex-flatmate George Percy. Or at Floors Castle, seat of the Duke of Roxburghe, father of her other flatmate Ted Innes-Ker. (Carole apparently found both ducal sons to be such nice boys.)Ex-boyfriend Billy More Nisbett, who is sporty and handsome, had a highly sought-after drawing room at The Drum, a Palladian stately on the outskirts of Edinburgh, ruled over by his socialite mother Patrea, a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne.Pippas boyfriend of three years at Edinburgh was Jonathan JJ Jardine Patterson, a banking heir whose family had an estate in Dumfriesshire. Shes said to have split up with him in 2007 because he wouldnt commit.But there are also lots of jolly urban suitors and friends, like Prince Harrys friend Guy Pelly, who owns the aforementioned Public, and Old Etonian Charlie Gilkes, owner of Maggies, the Margaret Thatcher tribute nightclub on Fulham Road.To be fair to Pippa, Edinburgh University has for a while now been heaving with young grandees! with co untry estates the sort of children of the upper classes who 30 years ago would have scraped into Oxford.In one recent year, legend has it, there were 60 Old Etonians in one Edinburgh intake.
And in their huge flats, dinners for 30 are the norm.It was all port and cheese, and no heating, because warmth was seen as vulgar, says a student who was at Edinburgh with Pippa.

Pippas quite bossy in a smiley way she definitely sits on the drawing room throne.

In fact, what was vulgar was always a topic of conversation: I remember someone saying chicken breasts were beyond the pale.Pippa was right at home amongst the pashmina-wearing yarae (plural of yahs), the set who went on shooting weekends, drove VWs and only mixed with each other. They were very incestuous. They all slept with each other. They often still do.It seems that romantically, Pippa has a certain type in mind. Other dalliances with ex public schoolboys such as diamond heir Simon Youngman, who is described as a sporty, popular, not super-intellectual or anything, have been in the same mould, although in Youngmans case, a few dates, including the opera, led to nothing permanent.Alex Loudon, a graduate of Durham, seems to have had more luck.The son of James Loudon, a retired financier and former High Sheriff of Kent and his glamorous wife Jane, Alex was President of the elite society Pop at Eton which basically means he was unbelievably popular, just as he was at his Kent prep school, Wellesley House.A fellow pupil from Wellesley remembers: Even then, he was confident and sporty. When everyone was asked who they wanted to sleep next to in the dorm, they all said they wanted the bed next to him.Another Eton contemporary recalls: Going to Alexs house, Olantigh, was the weekend invitation every child was after.
Hardly surprising given that it is an imposing redbrick porticoed stately built in 1910, with gardens that are opened to the public. Alex is now at London Business School, having left a distinguished cricketing career! playing for Kent, Warwickshire and, briefly, England.

Maid of Honour: Pippa joined Chelsy Davy at a charity event alongside Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie this weekBeing fit and outdoorsy themselves, the Middleton girls have a soft spot for a cricketer. Kates St Andrews boyfriend before William was a cricketer, Rupert Finch. And William himself is no sporting slouch, with skiing in Klosters one his favourite recreational pursuits.Pippa, like Kate, looks like a Bond girl on skis. Both sisters also love swimming, while Pippa can thrash most people at tennis, too, says an acquaintance.Like her sister, Pippa has bright white teeth, lustrous hair courtesy of Richard Ward in Sloane Street the two Middleton girls and their mother like to go together for the couture hair experience as the salon calls it and a public schoolgirls wardrobe of colourful, slinky Issa dresses that flatter her petite frame.Brazilian-born Issa designer Daniella Helayel, who also designed the blue dress Kate wore at her engagement announcement, is a friend; Pippa and James sit front row at her fashion shows.Other favourite labels include the preppy Jack Wills, Katherine Hooker (she makes well-cut, flirty tweeds) and the colourful and sexy Sonia Rykiel.Pippa is said to work out with Kate in the gym at Clarence House, but her fondness for fake tan is hers alone.
Recently shes had the chance to top it up with a real one: the entire family, minus Kate, went to Mustique last month. Usually they all go skiing, but they decided to give it a miss this year so no one has to hobble down the Abbey aisle on crutches.In short, according to U.S. Vogues Plum Sykes, author of Bergdorf Blondes, a best-seller about New Yorks Park Avenue Princesses: Pippa is the luckiest one of all. She gets all the right sort of attention from men, fashion designers, hostesses and things, and doesnt have any of the duties.Shes become a Princess without the b! ad bits. On the day of the Royal wedding, Pippa has the daunting task of sorting out her sisters dress and taking charge of the half a dozen young bridesmaids and pages, including two three-year-olds.Whats more, she has to do it in front of a predicted audience of one billion.
But with her capable nature, the younger Miss Middleton looks like just the girl to pull it off.