User:Moonraker/PM

Philippa Charlotte "Pippa" Middleton (born 6 September 1983) is an English party planner, socialite and sister of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. She is known because of her sister and through the reporting of society news.

On 29 April 2011, she was the maid of honour at her sister's wedding to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, second in the line of succession to Queen Elizabeth II.

Early life
Middleton was born in 1983, the second of the three children of Michael Middleton who was then a British Airways flight dispatcher, and Carole Goldsmith, who was a former flight attendant. Her father's family came from Leeds, West Yorkshire, and one of her great-grandmothers, called Olivia Lupton, belonged to a business family active in Leeds for generations. Carole Middleton's mother's family were labourers and miners from County Durham. The third child of the family is James Middleton (born 1987), now a business man.

In the mid 1980s, when her two eldest children were at a pre-school and the family was living at Bradfield Southend, Middleton's mother set up 'Party Pieces', a company which began by making party bags and which now sells party supplies and decorations by mail order. By 1995 the firm, run by both parents, was so successful that it moved into a range of farm buildings at Ashampstead Common, and since then the Middleton parents are reported to have become millionaires.

In 1995, the Middletons moved to Bucklebury, Berkshire. Like her sister, Middleton was initially educated at St Andrew's School, Pangbourne, then at Downe House, a girls' boarding school in Cold Ash, and finally at Marlborough College, Wiltshire. She then followed her sister to higher education in Scotland, attending the University of Edinburgh to study English literature. There she shared a house with Lord Edward Innes-Ker, a son of the Duke of Roxburghe, and with Earl Percy, heir of the Duke of Northumberland.

Adult life
Following graduation, in 2008 Middleton took a job with Table Talk, a company based in London that organises events and parties. Also in 2008, Tatler magazine named Middleton "the Number 1 Society Singleton", beating singer-songwriter James Blunt and Princess Eugenie. Since then, she has often been described as a socialite. As part of a duo with her older sister, Middleton has received wide press coverage, focussing on her social life and her lifestyle.

The Daily Telegraph reported in 2010 that Middleton's parents had ambitious plans to expand their company, Party Pieces, and wanted their daughter Pippa to take an increasingly prominent role.

Personal life
For several years on Burns Night, Middleton has carried the haggis, accompanied by bagpipes, into a pub called the Old Boot Inn at Stanford Dingley in Berkshire. She was reported in 2010 to be dating the City trader and former England cricketer Alex Loudon. After her sister's wedding, The New Zealand Herald reported that she and Loudon were "all but engaged".

Author Plum Sykes has written of her "Pippa is the luckiest one of all. She gets all the right sort of attention from men, fashion designers, hostesses and things, and doesn't have any of the duties. She's become a Princess without the bad bits."

Sports
A skier, in March 2008 Middleton joined her sister Kate and Prince William for a skiing holiday in Switzerland. She has also tobogganed down the 1,212 metre ice skeleton racing track the Cresta Run at St Moritz. The multi-millionaire Trevor Baines claimed to have acted as her instructor.

Middleton can handle a shotgun and in 2008 shot twenty-three game birds in a day in Scotland, commenting "my modest 23 wasn't so good actually and I found the partridge quite disconcerting, they are so small".

Royal wedding
Following the official announcement of her sister's engagement to Prince William on 23 November 2010, the Daily Mail commented "Ironically, family friends of the Middletons say that everyone always thought that the sparkly Pippa rather than the quieter and less glossy Kate would be the one most likely to make a spectacular marriage." Middleton was immediately tipped to be the chief bridesmaid at the planned Royal wedding. This was confirmed and widely reported on 14 February 2011, although the title to be used for the position is maid of honour. It has also been suggested that Middleton has taken on the role of the chief planner of the wedding itself.

In film
The part of Pippa Middleton is played by Mary Elise Hayden in a TV movie entitled William and Kate, released on 18 April 2011. Camilla Luddington plays Kate, Serena Scott Thomas plays Carole Middleton, and Ben Cross plays Prince Charles.

Ancestry
Middleton's ancestors include Sir Thomas Leighton (ca. 1530–1610), Governor of Guernsey from 1570 to 1609, and his wife Elizabeth Knollys (1549–1605), who was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth I. Her later ancestors include The Rev. Thomas Davis, a Church of England hymn-writer, whose grand-daughter Olive Christiana Lupton was one of the grandmothers of Michael Middleton.