It's been an annus horribilis for birthday girl Carole Middleton, writes CLAUDIA JOSEPH. Her busines

All thoughts in the Middleton household will be on their daughter, Catherine, as she continues her recovery from abdominal surgery.

And that will apply even today, the birthday of Carole Middleton.

In previous years, she has celebrated abroad - and memorably so for her 60th, which she spent on the private Caribbean island of Mustique with pink champagne, grenadine cocktails, a jazz band and fireworks. 

Today's 69th birthday will be a quieter affair, and not just because the eldest of her three children, the Princess of Wales, has been unwell.  

Carole Middleton at the State Funeral of Her Late Majesty The Queen in September 2022

Carole and Michael Middleton attend their daughter's Together At Christmas Carol Service at Westminster Abbey last December

Carole is pictured with her daughter, Kate, in easier times at Royal Ascot in 2017

A police officer stands outside the London Clinic, where Catherine, Princess of Wales was hospitalised for abdominal surgery

For the past 12 months have been something of an annus horribilis for the Middletons, and Carole in particular.

Kate's mother has only been seen in public once since her business Party Pieces collapsed last June owing £2.6 million.

That was at her daughter's Together at Christmas Carol Service at Westminster Abbey before Christmas. 

Carole avoided the Wimbledon tennis championships and Royal Ascot, both regular fixtures in her diary.

In May, Prince William’s in-laws were given pride of place at the Coronation, seated in row seven of Westminster Abbey, immediately behind the Royal family and next to world leaders.

But it all exploded the following month when it was announced that her company had fallen into administration with debts of £2.6 million, misery compounded by a malicious campaign seemingly from embittered creditors, a cruel depiction in the Netflix series The Crown, and her daughter’s surgery.

While Party Pieces was bought for £180,000 by entrepreneur James Sinclair, who describes himself as the ‘Millionaire Clown’, there was no money to pay the creditors.

Not only did the company owe the taxman £613,000 in unpaid VAT, and RBS £219,000 for a Covid loan, a string of family businesses was left out of pocket with some £456,000 due.

Disgruntled supplier Sultani Gas, which was owned more than £20,430 by Party Pieces for helium for balloons, accused Carole of ‘betrayal’.

‘What hurt me the most was that I trusted her as the mother-in-law of the future King,’ a spokesman said, ‘and she just betrayed me. It is absolutely unacceptable.'

The firm’s landlord, Lord Iliffe, on whose Yattendon estate the company was based, was also owed £57,480 in unpaid rent and faced ‘severe financial consequences’.

Other creditors, according to the report, included Portuguese gas canister maker Amtrol Alfa, which was owed £82,872, and party decorations firm Ginger Ray, due £52,304.

It must have been felt personally by Carole, who who set up the company at her kitchen table, in 1987, when she was pregnant with son James. 

Afterwards, the Middletons became the targets of a vicious campaign in the village of Bucklebury, where they have lived since 2012, with posters put up on trees and lamp posts around their home.

However, Carole has her supporters, as well as her detractors, including the new owner of Party Pieces, who claimed she was not the ‘captain of a ship on its downfall' but 'a lifeboat trying to save it’.

She stepped back from the mail order company in 2019, in order to spend more time with her grandchildren (Pippa has three children with husband James Matthews, Arthur, Grace, Rose, while James and wife Alizée have baby Inigo.)

Carole Middleton inspects the American launch of Party Pieces. ShopRite stores in New Jersey became the first US distributor

The Berkshire village of Bucklebury where Carole and Michael live

Posters in the village of Bucklebury, including this one, attacked the Middletons for the collapse of Party Pieces. The model in the picture claimed she had been made redundant as a result of the business failure and, as the note below explains, had turned to the adult OnlyFans site for income. She denied the posters were a publicity stunt

Michael and Carole Middleton arrive at Westminster Abbey ahead of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III in May last year. The following month, it would be announced that Carole's business, Party Pieces, had collapsed into administration

It was at that stage that the company took on new directors and investors, including Steven Bentwood, a lingerie tycoon, and financier and sports businessman Darryl Eales, leaving the day-to-day running to a new management team.

The company was hit hard by the pandemic, And an international expansion in the United States, the Middle East and Europe stretched budgets further.

‘When she handed Party Pieces over to investors and shareholders, it was in text-book condition,’ said Sinclair, ‘a really nice company that was regularly making £1 million profit a year from £3-5 million turnover.

‘Unfortunately, the investors put into place the wrong team with the wrong strategy….Mistakes were made.’

The latest - and final - series of the Netflix blockbuster The Crown, hardly helped.

Carole was lampooned and portrayed as an ambitious match maker who had engineered the marriage between William and Kate.

Speaking on an episode of the hit Mail podcast, The Crown: Fact or Fiction, her brother Gary Goldsmith attacked the show for misrepresenting his family.

'Carole isn't that manipulative evil person, coming up with ways by which she can force her way into the Royal Family,' he said.

'First and foremost, Kate did brilliantly well to get into St Andrews. She's an amazing girl, but that wasn't noted.

‘It was all to do with: “Kate you've got to be doing these things, you've got to be showing your legs”.

Prince George with his Grandmother, Carole  - right, in shades - as they attend the King's Cup Regatta in Cowes in 2019

'It's just not my family. It's not the way Carole operates.’

It is not known whether Kate, 42, will be well enough to see her parents or her siblings Pippa Matthews, 40, and James Middleton, 36 today.

While in other circumstances, Mike and Carole would celebrate abroad or perhaps at their £4.7 million Grade II listed home in Berkshire, for the moment they have cleared their diaries to help Prince William look after their three grandchildren George, ten, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five.

The princess is expected to recover at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Great Park, which is a 40-minute drive from her parents.

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