In recent years, there’s been a concerted effort to make Peter Phillips sound better or more impressive than he really is. He’s 47 years old and he’s basically on his tenth random money-making scheme since the pandemic. He also seems to be going through a post-divorce midlife crisis in his romantic life, moving on from his marriage to Summer with a married woman, then hopping out of that relationship and immediately jumping into a different serious relationship. Peter also receives that occasional “Mike Tindall treatment,” meaning that Peter is sometimes tasked with being Prince William’s new surrogate brother. All of which to say, Peter’s life seems pretty unsettled and chaotic (which is just what they had planned for Prince Harry, btw). Well, the Mail’s Eden Confidential column claims that Peter has two new money-generating schemes: landlord and “director” of a shipping company. These are like mob cover jobs.
He’s tried his hand at corporate hospitality and ‘sponsorship management’, attempted to muscle in on the market for Covid tests, and even cropped up in an ad on Chinese TV, during which he reminisced about being nourished on Jersey milk from the royal herd at Windsor. Now, just months after I disclosed that he’d entered the wheeler-dealer world of commercial property – paying just over £5million to become landlord of a series of shops, small businesses, bars and restaurants in Bath – the King’s nephew Peter Phillips is also trying his luck in an entirely different sphere.
He has, I can reveal, just become the director of Maritime Passport Ltd, a fledgling company founded only last year. It does not, as yet, appear to have a website, but it is, I understand, a business specialising in digitising shipping certifications. In landlubber’s terms, this appears to mean adapting old systems so that they continue to function effectively in the modern, digital age.
That presumably explains why one of Phillips’s four co-directors is quite a boffin. She’s Professor Basak Akdemir, 50, who, among numerous other roles, serves as a trustee of the Turkish Maritime Education Foundation and earned her PhD with a thesis entitled: ‘Improving Supply Forecasting within the Shipping Industry.’
Understandably, Phillips, 47, whose latest girlfriend since divorcing Autumn Kelly is writer and nurse Harriet Sperling, can’t quite match that. He has a degree in Sports Science from Exeter University and, perhaps more pertinently, was from childhood onwards regularly aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia – used by his sister for her pre-wedding party to Mike Tindall.
Above all else, he has, in his mother, Princess Anne, someone whose passion for the sea comes second only to her love for being in the saddle. It’s a passion which periodically yields some sparkling perks – most notably a diamond tiara which matched the antique necklace which Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip gave her for her 18th birthday in 1968. The tiara came not from her parents but the World Wide Shipping Group, one of whose ships Anne had launched. Perhaps Phillips’s new role will help him find a rock – or two – for Harriet?
Richard Eden is genuinely arguing that Peter will be a natural at a shipping-industry job because… Peter went for some rides on the old royal yacht?? These people truly live in a different world. Anyway, all of this sounds like yet another pretend job, another questionable scheme for the title-free cousin. Granted, this is what Princess Anne wanted for her kids – she wanted them to be able to make their own money and have jobs or careers. Zara has sort of figured out the balance as an equestrian/celebrity. Peter never really put it all together though.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
