EMBARRASSING ANCESTORS

An Aussie bloke has gone public and released photos and other information, to prove he was the love child of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. We can’t pick our parents but surely, even if true, this is a classic case where someone has the opportunity to lie low and avoid such embarrassment.

I’d have thought soaking wet Charles would be almost the last bugger on earth one would want to claim as one’s father.

But talk of the devil. The day that news-item appeared, the latest Guardian Weekly arrived and lo and behold, inadvertently, a similar matter presented itself. Specifically a full page review of a newly published book “The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey” by English writer Julia Laite.

Lydia Harvey it transpired was a gullible New Zealand girl who quit her maid’s job and in 1910 came to Wellington from the countryside, ambitious for something better. She found it in the form of transportation to Argentina as an unwilling prostitute.

Laite has researched her history as a typical example to recount the then so called white slave traffic industry in the early part of last century, shipping European girls to then booming Argentina for prostitution. It will be recalled this was a critical theme in Evelyn Waugh’s great 1928 comic novel “Decline and Fall”.

So what’s all this to do with the Aussie bloke?

Well, the book review includes a photograph of a chap called Antonio Carvelli who apparently was the king-pin a century ago in running this trade. And make no mistake, he’s the absolute clone of Wellington commercial real estate identity Chris Gollins.

The question is, now the cat is out of the bag, will Gollins step up boldly, do the decent thing and admit to Carvelli being his ancestor, which is certainly less embarrassing than the dumb Aussie claiming Prince Charles when common sense says he should have shut up.

I’ll keep readers posted.