The File on Charlie

A Prince But Not a Star
Educating Charlie
Pocketing It Like an Oligarch
Living Like a Prince
A Highness in Low Places
A Prince of Dubious Deals
In the Post
Knows What He Dislikes
Doctor Windsor
A Man of Religions
Windsor at Work


Print Friendly and PDF

Charlie Is No Darling

Doctor Windsor

Charlie likes to use his influence to promote his beliefs about food, health and climate change.

In 2007 he suggested that the McDonald's fast food chain be banned. "That's the key" to reducing the consumption of high-fat foods he said during a visit to his brother monarchy Dubai, a country classified as "not free" by Freedom House.

The next year Charlie told the Daily Telegraph that experiments with genetically modified food were the reason that the world was “facing all these challenges, climate change and everything”. This is believed to be the first time that this explanation for climate change has been suggested.

He also used his official status as a "prince" to help his Foundation for Integrated Health charity get influence in the National Health Service and on the use of tax-payers’ money that is unlikely to have been otherwise available.

Windsor’s "private secretary" and former charity chairperson Michael Peat used Windsor’s status to put pressure on a critic of the charity, Prof. Edzard Ernst, by making representations to his employer, the University of Exeter. Another Foundation trustee later said that the professor "condemns us to being slaves of population-based statistical totalitarianism".

In 2010 the Foundation closed following the arrest of a former employee in a fraud investigation. The Financial Times quoted Sense About Science UK director Ellen Raphael as welcoming the end of the Foundation. She accused Windsor of "interference in policy" and of restricting "the development of evidence-based medicine".

The downfall of the charity had began when auditors queried its accounts. Subsequently the police made two arrests on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. The accounts for 2007 showed an operating deficit of £62,000.

Pointer Next

Return to Top