Mary thanks Anna Johanssen

Hobart
20 March 2006

Dear Anna,

What can I say except THANK YOU AND OH MY GOD THIS IS GOING SO MUCH BETTER THAN I EVER PLANNED! You are a genius, lady, and I am LOVING it. LOVE LOVE LOVING it. And the best part is that NO ONE is the wiser as to our little machinations! LOL!

From the second Joachim showed me and Fred a photograph of his new little French croissant from their holiday last summer I knew SOMETHING had to be done about this. It was as if Fred’s alcoholic, perverted beanpole-farmer brother of his had just shown me a freaking MIRROR! Except this was like one of those magic mirrors that makes you look even better than you are in real life even if in your real life you have spent the equivalent of the Gross Domestic Product of Chile on your appearance makeover. It was FREAKY! (I wish they really made those magic mirrors in real life, I’d love to give them to my family as Christmas presents.) Plus her birthday is the day after mine, but in a better Chinese New Year, the BITCH. GOD, I was literally starting to shake in my Ugg boots.

And Jokke the joke-y, as I call him, was just going on and on about how SWEET and KIND and OPEN and HAPPY and shit this girl is. Oh, and how well-educated and well-traveled she is and oh she speaks a million languages, too. LA-DI-DAMN-DA! Well, if that isn’t bad enough that he has a taste for truly and deeply wonderful women who bring him great joy, he also had to blabber on about how she has a real job that he didn’t have to get for her and how she pays her own rent and has some crazy natural maternal instinct or whatever they call that, well, you can imagine that I was checking out and feeling faint by this time. I almost thought the jig was up when I heard that her dog has a better name than mine and it’s actually related to something besides a failed marketing campaign (which was Siimon’s fault, by the way!). No way is sister going to ruin the good gig I’VE got going, so I called you. It’s bad enough she already has the more Danish version of my name. If our little operation hadn’t worked, Anna, that bitch would fit right into Danish society so fast and I would be forgotten in the flurry of “Our Jokke’s Hard-Working Delightful Princesses: A Perfect Fit in Denmark” publicity. Can you imagine if frog girl started blabbering in Danish in six weeks time, and doing it all the while wearing Danish fashions? I’d be TOAST.

Now since you snuck up on me leaving work to have your goon photographer take pictures of me with a scowl on my face and some “back off” body language for the world, I figure you owe me BIG. No, it’s not enough that later I did pose for your cameras “going to work” and doing all those things that other young women seem to do ostensibly to be SELF-SUFFICIENT but really just do to make me look BAD. No, you needed to really make restitution. So I must say, Anna, congrats babe. This is all just so brilliant, especially in light of the fact that my thugs on the street in Oz can’t seem to contain Amber’s ramblings that are going to expose my strategic operating techniques during one 2000 Olympics. WOULD YOU JUST GET A NEW INAPPROPRIATE BOYFRIEND AND SHUT THE HELL UP! GOD.

I never thought I’d be able to successfully get her address from our little potato farmer, but his “staff” is so damn discombobulated since China Girl left him for that hottie who filmed my docuMEntary, that it was easier than I thought. Plus, Nikolaj knows where everything is kept and is just too young to know the truth about Auntie Mary’s strategies, so it all turned out to be a walk in the park. Nothing like pretending you can’t wait to get out to the Jutland countryside and have a hyggelig weekend together. WHATEVER. Glad that nightmare is over! Maybe you’d like to look into having a COOK and maybe someone to take the DISHES AWAY? GOD. And could you be any further away from a Chanel boutique and civilisation? It’s like spending a weekend with Patty or Jane as they try to make dinner THEMSELVES, AND shut the kids and their hubbies up. I do NOT miss Bogan World AT ALL.

Anyway, thank you for being so amenable to this scoop and for putting up with us telling Se og Hoer, too. I know they’re scummy, but not the same scum level as EB, so I knew they had to be in on it, just a day after you, as per our agreement, just to give our little Marie the right patina. My God, she was more of a bait-taker than I ever thought she’d be! HA! Blah blah blah blah blah, did you just love it? I was HOWLING! And what is even better is that everyone is talking about ME because of the sort of resemblance even though her features are softer and more approachable, but they don’t say that do they? NO! They just talk about how much we look alike!! And that our birthdays are practically the same. It’s all about ME, still!

And if that isn’t already pretty damn perfect, all the magazines are covering her and what you said was just a simple 5 minute conversation with a really nice girl who was just overflowing with charm and happiness (GAG me, Anna), you’ve all succeeded in making her look like a loose-lipped idiot-blabbermouth. GENIUS!! Talk, talk, talk (or seem like it) all you want, girlie, it doesn’t phase me ONE BIT. Because no longer should I worry that you and Fred and Joachim and the Chimney-in-laws are going to all speak French together and leave me the freak out of the goddamn loop. Joke’s on YOU, HONEY! Buh-bye!

Everyone is talking about how DIGNIFIED I am and how DISCREET I was during the “entrapment years” or dating years as BB should continue to call them or else I will sue your ass. If any fool ever thought for one half second that I was strategically planning my way into Fred’s bank account, er, heart, then our little French Better-Than-Mary makes me look quite WONDERFUL and PERFECT, DOESN’T SHE? Eat my dirt, mate! Holy hell, people are finally comparing me – favorably this time! - to the original little miss perfect, our “beloved” Alexandra! Does it get better than this?! LOL!

Yes, it DOES! You’ve managed to make this wonderful media madness so furious that I was able to sneak down to Tasmania with the kid. No one will ever pay attention to the fact that I rented a killer house on an isolated beach to get away from that F’ED UP DANISH WINTER crap. No one will ever pay attention to the fact that my kid is only cute with a LACE BONNET on his head to disguise the big ears and bald skull (thanks for nothing DAD). OK, so I had to pass on the Commonwealth Games because the “real” royalty in Australia was there. No way sister is going to try and STEAL MY THUNDER, so I just stayed at the house. Someone might want to write me a little THANK YOU NOTE, mm?

Oh, the relaxation I’m enjoying here at home! It’s like all the stupid “jobs” that Fred got for me through his friends are forgotten! And forgotten that I got him to subsidize me in stupid Paris after I’d already shown up at his door-step in December 2001 and he was all like, well, um, ok, but you can’t live in Denmark I have a place in Paris I’ll let you stay in. Score! (Or so I thought, it’s in some CRAPPY weird UN-glamourous part of town, thanks for nothing Freddo, think I’ll be coming to Denmark anyway!) Totally forgotten that I couldn’t speak Danish until after the wedding! Totally forgotten that I hate his royal cousins who think they’re better than anyone in the world, AS IF. Totally forgotten about my family’s slurping at the trough and free professorships and central Copenhagen flats. Totally forgotten about my stupid ass best friend. Totally forgotten about my manly physique and once tragic weight and skin tone. And totally forgotten that his mother engaged us after I impressed her with my “discretion” – LOL! And totally forgotten everything I said about modern monarchies because well, I’ll admit that’s a hard one and would force me to give up everything COOL in my life like free clothes, and slaves, I mean servants, and horse riding, and shit. That would SUCK. NO WAY I’m living the life of my sisters serving up Hamburger Helper to snot-nose rug rats in stained op-shop clothes with some plumber I’m forced to sleep with yelling at me if it was me who spent the money for a new roof on a new purse as if that is something that you should EVER have to JUSTIFY. WHATEVER. I’d rather be stoned to death by Miuccia Prada herself, for f’s sake.

So good job, but now burn this letter. It was written in confidence and if you decide to cross me and to print it, so help me, I will open the gates of Hell so fast on your crazy ass your Billed won’t know it’s Bladet from it’s elbow. GOT IT?

MRH Mary