Payback time for Princess Pushy as husband Prince Michael cavorts with a young blonde

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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Sex God he's not. The beard's too big, the jaw-line it conceals too indeterminate.

The oversize ties look like they're trying to hide something, and the manner's too diffident.

Yet has Prince Michael of Kent, at 66, got something the rest of us don't know about?

An open marriage? Prince Michael and Marianne Krex

An open marriage? Prince Michael and Marianne Krex

Why else would a pouting thirty-something beauty run the gauntlet of the paparazzi just to be his date at the ballet?

Why else would a besotted artist keep a detailed diary of her bedtime encounters with him?

Why would his wife seek out a toyboy young enough to be her son just to get him jealous?

No, for too long we have been underestimating the Queen's diffident cousin  -  a gifted horseman we know him to be, but perhaps a bit of a stallion, too.

Certainly, when most men are sinking gratefully into retirement and spending more time with their allotments, blue-eyed Michael George Charles Franklin Windsor is out there making hay.

An errant wife? Marie-Christine with Mikhail Kravchenko

An errant wife? Marie-Christine with Mikhail Kravchenko

Of late, he's been dropping in regularly at Julie's, a bar and restaurant in London's Notting Hill, which has long been the discreet haunt of celebrities.

'There's a room upstairs that is curtained off,' says a regular.

'That's where he takes them.'

Last week, he escorted Danish-born Marianne Krex to the ballet, a fiery performance of Khachaturian's Spartacus  -  the slave who took on the Roman Empire  -  by the Mikhailovsky Ballet from St Petersburg.

As the couple left London's Coliseum, the blonde Miss Krex tried to hide from the cameras by holding her jacket up to her face.

Marianne Krex covers her face as she leaves the London Coliseum with Prince Michael

Marianne Krex covers her face as she leaves the London Coliseum with Prince Michael

Prince Michael finally caught up with a shaken Miss Krex and, together, the couple headed off to a first-night party at the Russian Embassy before disappearing together into the night.

How unlike the usually discreet Prince Michael. For a while, ballet dancer Bryony Brind, now in her late 40s, was a dining partner, but usually only when Princess Michael was abroad.

It is just this week, we learn there was more to it. Despite denials at the time, a friend of theirs has told me: 'No question it was more than platonic.'

That affair is long over, but keep an eye out for the upcoming memoirs of an American artist called Lucy Weber.

As yet untitled, her book should perhaps be called My Life With Casanova since, for eight years, Ms Weber was the prince's squeeze.

And for most of that time, Michael sent her billets-doux signing himself 'Casanova'.

Lucy kept a diary of his visits. In one entry, she wrote: 'He loves sex pure, unadulterated. He thinks about it quite a bit during his working hours  -  loves white suspenders, beige or tan. His sexual senses are keen and he has a vivid imagination.'

What  -  Prince Michael? Isn't he the man who for years was labelled the Royal Family's resident cuckold? Well, maybe it's payback time.

Having, in 1978, discarded his claim to the throne (he was 16th in line) to marry the Roman Catholic Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, he watched in dismay as his wife  -  deemed for ever to be known as 'Princess Pushy'  -  got caught in a series of indiscretions.

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent attending the memorial service for Isobella blow at the Guards Chapel In London last September: Friends say he will never divorce her because he does not want to embarrass the Queen

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent attending the memorial service for Isobella blow at the Guards Chapel In London last September: Friends say he will never divorce her because he does not want to embarrass the Queen

'Rather like Fergie a few years later, Marie-Christine believed that when she became a princess she'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice,' a friend of the couple told me.

'It took her quite some time to realise there was no bottomless pit of royal riches.'

With a refugee childhood behind her  -  she escaped her homeland in a handcart pushed by her mother  -  MC, as she is known, became obsessed with money. And with those who had it.

'She loved to have bank-notes around her,' her former private secretary, John Barratt, once confided to me.

'She loved its smell and feel  -  she would keep wads of it in her handbag. Her need for it was almost primeval.'

Barratt recalled a dinner in New York attended by MC and Bill Paley, the hugely rich creator of the CBS multimedia group.

'She took her shoes off and started playing footsy with him,' said Barratt.

'Only one thing: by that stage, Paley was well into his 80s.'

Though nothing much came of that encounter, others followed, including one with wealthy Senator John Warner, ex-husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor.

The couple were found in compromising circumstances in the back row of a New York cinema. Prince Michael shrugged and said nothing.

Then there was Ward Hunt, a rich Texan oilman who was linked with the princess.

Princess Pushy looks on as former newscaster Selina Scott chats with Prince Michael during a party at the Natural History Museum in London

Princess Pushy looks on as former newscaster Selina Scott chats with Prince Michael during a party at the Natural History Museum in London

Buckingham Palace even issued a stern statement, saying: 'Any suggestion that the princess and Mr Hunt are anything other than acquaintances is unfounded.'

Shortly after, however, MC was photographed disguised in a bright red wig knocking hard on Mr Hunt's Belgravia door, seeking solace.

More recently, the princess disported herself in Venice with a young Russian tycoon.

Mikhail Kravchenko, then 40 to her 61, paid her £2,200-a-night bill at the five-star Hotel Cipriani, while parking himself in the adjoining suite.

'Of course Mikhail finds me attractive and beguiling,' she was later reported as saying.

'Men are charmed by me, and in return I am a very tactile woman. Why can't people show some respect?'

That last remark was very much in character for a woman who once said she was 'more royal' than the Queen  -  pointing to her distinguished family tree.

It is, in fact, her husband who is more royal than the Queen, descending as he does from a father (Prince George) who was the son of a king (George V), and a mother (Princess Marina) whose father was a king (Prince Nicolas of Greece).

In the world of royalty, these things matter  -  but Prince Michael just let it go: 'He's such a charming man,' says someone who once worked for him.

'Lovely, considerate, decent. Just don't ask me about her.'

The couple celebrated  -  or possibly, didn't celebrate  -  their 30th wedding anniversary just over a month ago.

They have two grown-up children, but little else to glue them together. The house in Gloucestershire, Nether Lypiatt Manor, has gone  -  they couldn't afford it.

Both Michael and Marie-Christine have fingers in the lucrative Russian pie  -  Prince Micahel's grandmother was Grand Duchess Helen Vladimirovna of Russia, and in 2006, MC was reported as 'discussing doing some business' with Kravchenko  -  but there is no throne awaiting them there, and as they grow older they are not getting richer.

Never part of the Royal Firm, Michael has tried his hand at consultancies and directorships to make ends meet, but they have never lasted long, and funding his wife's extravagant lifestyle has been a perpetual headache.

For her part, MC presents to friends the image of a woman frustrated by her lack of concrete achievement.

'She's very bright,' says one friend, 'she knows she could have done more. She once had a successful interior design business, but that went.

'She's written a couple of books, but it's uphill work for relatively little reward. Despite all the brave talk about men finding her tactile, she's reached a certain stage in her life.

'There's no tall dark stranger waiting to whisk her off. That Russian was probably the last throw of the dice  -  and an attempt to remind her husband how racy she can be. But Michael's all she's got. I think he's suddenly happy to show her how lucky she is,' added the friend, wryly, 'by dating all these women.'

Friends say that when it comes to the Royal Family, Michael is very loyal to the Queen.

'He could have kicked MC out long ago,' says one.

'But he gave up his place in the line of succession to marry her. It caused a huge stink at the time. He couldn't embarrass the Queen a second time by getting a divorce.'

And so now, it would seem, comes the Indian summer of Prince Michael of Kent. His father, the late Duke of Kent, a legendary lover of both men and women, died in 1942 in a plane crash in Scotland when Michael was only a few weeks old.

His mother, Princess Marina, though outwardly strait-laced, had affairs with the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent and the black society pianist Leslie Hutchinson.

In those days, it was easier to conceal your hot royal blood.

A couple of years ago, Michael went to a Chinese New Year party given by banking heir Andy Wong at the Royal Courts of Justice in London's Strand.

He brought along historian and biographer Leonie Frieda, who at 48 was at the height of her considerable beauty.

On the instructions of their host, the couple wore fancy dress  -  Michael came as a medieval knight, while Leonie dazzled as a Florentine noblewoman.

'They were like a pair of teenagers,' recalls a guest.

'They were clearly enjoying each other's company in a tactile way. A lot of people commented on it.'

Their dancing attracted even more attention, with the prince pulling open his shirt to reveal a bare chest adorned by a gold crucifix. For a man approaching pensionable age and of a hitherto apparently dull demeanour, it was an extraordinary performance.

Now it is the turn of beautiful, unmarried Marianne Krex. At 30 years his junior, she is possibly the youngest date Michael has had in a long, long while. Whether she will succumb to his charms at Julie's bar  -  or whether she already has  -  we may not know.

Yet what Marianne needs to understand is that like many other men who embark on affairs, Michael will never leave his wife.

They have too much shared history, too much to lose, nowhere else to go; long ago he realised he'd made his bed and would have to lie in it.

But if His Royal Highness occasionally enjoys a night out, well that's another matter, isn't it.

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