Princess Beatrice pulls out of FT foray

Alas, Princess Beatrice will not be joining the Financial Times on a month's internship after all. The speed with which her impending arrival reached the outside world apparently took the Princess, her people and the paper's management aback. It was really most unseemly for the news to leak. Forsooth, anyone would think the FT employed journalists…

Her royal Highness was due to have started on Monday. One suggestion causing much mirth internally was that the 19-year-old Princess — whose only previous work experience was as a VIP personal shopper in Selfridges — was to have worked on Alphaville, the FT's web-based stock-market guide.

One person who will be disappointed by her non-move is Beatrice's father, Prince Andrew. He's got many contacts in the business world, in places like Kazakhstan. All his journo daughter and her new colleagues had to do to access them for information was to ask. Sadly, that rich vein of stories is no more....

- City Spy diary, London Evening Standard