Winnipeg Free Press
Miss M takes pity on royals
August 28, 1993
THE DIVINE Miss M is not normally one to forgive and forget. Yet Bette Midler is promising not to throw any mud at the royal family during her upcoming concert tour, her first in 10 years. Her saucy quips about the Queen (“She’s the whitest woman in the world”) and Princess Anne (“She loves na ture despite what it did to her”) are legendary.
“I feel so sorry for all of them,” said Midler, 47, in a telephone interview. “They’re so beleaguered. They’re so beaten up. It’s all so sad.”
Could it be that Midler has mellowed? Will there be no more outrageous “trash with flash” like we saw in her 1980 concert movie, Divine Madness? Will she no longer be telling people exactly where they can go if they can’t take a joke?
Of course not. Not when she’s promising a show that will see the return of her wheelchair-riding, wise-cracking mermaid Dolores DeLago, “the toast of Chicago,” as well as the bawdy Soph, her tribute to Sophie Tucker.
Midler is also returning with the Harlettes, her chorus of vampy back-up singers.
