'MISCONSTRUED' PRINCESS HIDES

May 28, 2004
By Richard Johnson

PRINCESS Michael of Kent "is really sorry and mortified about what happened" at Da Silvano on Monday night, when she told a table of boisterous black diners they should "go back to the colonies."

"She is not a racist. To suggest that she said something racist deeply upset her," her spokesman, Simon Astaire, told PAGE SIX yesterday from London. "Something has been misconstrued." However, she has not shown her face in public in New York since Monday night.

Good thing too, since the princess's daughter, Gabriella Windsor, who graduates from Brown University on Monday, is dating Aatish Taseer, a wealthy Sikh who reportedly has been known to dress up as a safe-sex campaigner, "Captain Condom."

Astaire denied that "Pushy Galore," as she's known in Britain, was appalled by her daughter's choice of a boyfriend from the Third World. "Not true at all," said Astaire. "She welcomes him." Visit for more:

The flack was careful not to call anyone a liar. At the table making too much noise for the princess were Wall Streeter Merv Matheson, entertainment lawyer Tamera Reynolds, a public relations exec Nicole Young, TV reporter A.J. Callaway and record exec Philmore Anderson.

Astaire claimed that art collector Doug Cramer, who was the princess' host that evening, backed up her account of things: "He said there was a great deal of provocation from the other table." It was Cramer who asked the management to move his party to a quieter area of the restaurant.

Meanwhile, daughter Gabriella is full of her own obnoxious attitude. In an interview with the Times of London earlier this year, Ella, as she is known, said she was surprised by the binge-drinking of American college students.

At frat parties especially, she whined, "It's acceptable after throwing up to reach for another plastic cup of foamy beer rather than call for a taxi home . . . In England, everyone gets this out of their system at 14."

She went on: "The injuries from never-to-be-disclosed initiation rites leave new boys visibly bruised. Week-long vomiting is not uncommon and, for some awful reason, they all end up smelling of urine."

Gabriella said she avoided her American classmates and hung out mostly with Euros at "one bar, Viva, in the Greek part of town. It was great to be able to dance again. Dancing in America only seems to happen in derelict neon-lit cowsheds on the edge of small towns." Ah, those rotten former colonies.