Dumb it down

You don’t expect to see Royals or their relatives in many places, but you certainly don’t expect to see them on the cover of Playboy. So what’s going on with Kate Middleton’s cousin?

All I heard was Kate Middleton and Playboy in the same sentence. Please don’t disappoint me...

Do you honestly think that the Duchess of Cambridge is really going to pose for the most famous purveyor of smut in the world? Only in your dreams, lad.

Awww, who’s the one baring the flesh then?

That would be Kate’s cousin, the rather appropriately titled Katrina Darling, who when not posing for men’s magazines is a burlesque dancer in her spare time. She normally performs in Sunderland, which we wouldn’t have thought of as a pillar of the burlesque industry.

Wait, how come I’ve never heard of her before?

If you haven’t, you obviously weren’t paying a lot of attention because Katrina attracted a fair bit of coverage in the run-up to the Royal Wedding last year when it became apparent what she does for a living, although such was the amount of fawning media coverage the event attracted, we don’t blame you for not remembering every tiny detail.

So what’s the connection with Kate then?

They’re second cousins seemingly, although according to the Daily Mail, they’ve never even met, which in fairness to Kate, is the case with a lot of people and their second cousins. Saying that, there appears to be more than a slight resemblance between Prince William’s missus and Miss Darling, particularly in the image which graces the Playboy front cover.

So is this Katrina one trying to wring every last penny from what is a pretty tenuous connection between herself and one of the most famous women in the world?

Well, yes and no. Katrina claims that she has never made any attempt to contact her famous cousin, but I think it’s fair to say that she wouldn’t have received a six-figure sum to pose for Playboy if she didn’t share the same bloodline.

Also, her act is said to contain a routine in which she dons a Union Jack skirt, a crown and probably precious little else. It’s called 'God Save the Queen' and she performed it to mark the occasion of the Jubilee earlier this year. Surely it’s only a coincidence.

I occasionally buy Playboy for the jokes page anyway, so if I do splash out on the current edition, what can I expect to find?

Well the magazine ham up Katrina’s royal connection to a fairly significant degree, calling her a “Royal Beauty” and “Britain’s new burlesque Queen”. There’s also an eight page spread of Katrina in various suggestive poses, but if you only buy it for the jokes you wouldn’t be interested in that.

Well, I see that, eh, Becks and Ryan Gosling are also featured, so I might get it anyway.

You do that.