Every family, no matter how grand, has an odd member or two who can be an embarrassment from time to time.
Kate Middleton’s family is no exception. But due to her marrying into the Royal Family in 2011, their ‘black sheep’ has received far more attention than most.
The troublemaker in question is of course none other than Kate’s uncle – Gary Goldsmith.
He is ten years younger than his only sibling, the Princess of Wales’s mother, Carole.
Known as ‘Uncle G’ to the Middleton children, he became a millionaire before he was 30 but made the majority of his fortune when he sold his shares in his recruitment business for a reported £17 million in 2005.
But despite clearly having a knack for business, Gary spent his cash in embarrassing ways, perhaps most famously by buying an Ibiza party villa in 2006, which was dubbed ‘La Maison de Bang Bang’ – crude French slang for the ‘House of Sex’.
On the perimeter of the walled property, a six-foot high quote of ‘It’s Gary’s world, you just live in it’ was emblazoned there for years.
Certainly, there has rarely been a dull moment in Gary’s 59 years.
He has been seen as a ‘bad boy’ due to his seeming disregard for the law, including being pictured with drugs on the Spanish party island in 2009.
Gary was also caught on camera snorting cocaine and advising an undercover reporter how to meet Brazilian prostitutes.
However his most shameful episode was when he was found guilty of assaulting his wife, Julie-Ann Brown, by knocking her to the ground after she accused him of taking drugs during a drunken fight outside their home in 2017.
He later pleaded guilty to one count of assault by beating and was fined £5,000 and handed a 12-month community order with 20 sessions of rehabilitation.
Julie-Ann is Goldsmith’s fourth wife and the couple are still together.
She has also had her own brush with the law: a fraud conviction in 2011 after she plundered the accounts of the car sales firm where she worked as a clerk for £250,000.
Gary’s most recent stint in the public eye came when he took part in the 2024 season of Celebrity Big Brother – which reportedly left his family ‘infuriated’.
But despite the slew of scandals relating to the ‘black sheep’ of the Middleton clan, could he be the reason Kate grew up in such a wealthy home?
A book has claimed that he was the one who suggested to Carole that she should start selling her products for children’s parties online.
Carole had set up the business Party Pieces in 1987 and had initially only been trading out of her shed, but got the big idea to go on ‘the Net’ from Gary, according to royal author Katie Nicholl.
In her 2013 book, Kate: The Future Queen, she wrote: ‘Carole’s brother Gary, had advised her to put Party Pieces online.
‘According to one family member Gary told Carole to stop selling party bags from home and get them on the Net.
‘Carole was reluctant and said “Mums don’t use the internet”. Eventually she gave in and decided to set up an online company called Party Pieces.
‘The canny move seemed to be the making of the Middleton’s fortune.’
After the move, Party Pieces became so successful that Kate’s father Michael handed in his notice at British Airways so that he could also get involved.
Carole then leased an office space in the nearby village of Yattendon because they needed more room.
Kate and Pippa were also roped in to model the goods, which included personalised T-shirts which were posted on the company’s website.
As with starting any business, there were some stumbling blocks at the outset, as at the time setting up an online business was a relatively new idea – but the gamble paid off.
Three years after launching they started selling their signature party-themed boxes, which contained everything you needed for an at-home birthday party.
Carole revealed in a rare interview: ‘They were such a hit with everyone that now we try and make sure we have party boxes to go with every theme.’
She later admitted that although she worked around the clock, it eventually meant her family would grow up in a millionaire household.
‘They say if you do a job you enjoy, you don’t work a day in your life, and I truly feel like that; even when it’s very busy,’ Carole told the Daily Mail in 2021.
She added: ‘For me, my personal and my business life are not two separate things; they are both an essential and interwoven part of who I am.
‘My children inspired my business and have been involved from the start, and the success that we’ve had has helped us build the life we have currently. I feel incredibly fortunate to have found the professional fulfilment I always wanted.’
From the outset, family and business life were always linked, with all three Middleton children working for the company at some time. It was the best of both worlds for Carole.
Certainly the business helped pay the school fees for all three Middleton children, who were educated at Marlborough College – which now costs £60,000 per year for boarders.
At the prestigious school, Kate blossomed and got top grades, which allowed her to win a place at St Andrews University, where she would eventually meet William. The rest, as they say, is history.
In the years following Kate’s marriage, despite his contribution to the Middleton’s happy fortune, Gary seemed to have been kept at an arm’s distance.
William and Kate previously stayed at Gary’s notorious Ibiza villa in 2006, where they had an exciting summer holiday.
But when ‘Uncle G’ chose to share those details in an interview with Hello! Magazine in 2013, his relationship with the royals was put under further strain.
Carole and Michael, on the other hand, have been the models of discretion, never giving away as much as a peep about their daughter’s royal life.
The same code of silence applies to her younger daughter Pippa, 41, who married financier James Matthews in 2017 (they have two children), and son James, 37, who in 2021 married financial analyst Alizee Thevenet in France (they have one son).
Gary’s only child is a daughter, Tallulah, who was born from his second wife in 1997. Together they attended Kate’s wedding in 2011 and Pippa’s wedding in 2017 – although they weren’t invited to the reception at the Middleton’s Bucklebury mansion in the evening for the latter.
In March 2024, Gary revealed he hadn’t spoken to Kate in ‘ages’, adding ‘in years, maybe a year. Weddings and funerals is when we see them’.
After he was the first housemate to be evicted from the ITV revival series of Celebrity Big Brother, the Palace breathed a sigh of relief.
Although he kept the spilling of Middleton secrets to a minimum, Gary had previously grabbed headlines when he came out in support of Kate following Meghan’s infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
He said at the time: ‘I’ve known Kate since she was born and she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. It’s just simply not in her nature.’
Nevertheless, the Middleton family golden goose, Party Pieces, did eventually get wound up and sold in June 2023.
It had gone into administration and was written across to another company just 12 days after King Charles’s Coronation.
The passing of the family’s torch was seen at the time as a sign that Carole, 69, and Michael, 75, were wanting to spend more time with their grandchildren.
It came after William and Kate moved to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor estate in 2022, much closer to the Middleton family home in Berkshire.
This has made it easier for Carole, already an involved grandmother, to become yet more indispensable to Kate. And let’s not forget that, following the Queen’s death in September 2022, Kate and William have never been busier with official duties.
And following Kate’s treatment for cancer throughout 2024, the Middleton family have perhaps never been so tight-knit and private.
As for Gary, at the moment he seems to be firmly on outside of Middleton’s circle of trust.
But perhaps he would like to remind them that it was his business idea to get selling on ‘the Net’ which initially propelled them up the social classes and into the circle of the Royal Family.
It goes to show, maybe the embarrassing family black sheep can be helpful from time to time.
