One day in 1988, out of the blue, Max Boisot, a respected professor in a Chinese university issued a bombshell statement declaring that he was not the son of Prince Philip.
What made it odd was that nobody had asked him if he was.
But for a moment it looked as though Mr Boisot was in possession of the answer to the age-old question – was Philip ever unfaithful to the Queen? And did he leave behind, after his 2021 death, a string of secret love-children?
It’s true that rumours had circulated for years that Boisot, the son of Philip’s childhood friend and confidante Hélène Cordet, was indeed Philip’s love-child.
His sister Louise too, perhaps. Certainly his school fees at Gordonstoun had been paid for by Philip, the prince was his godfather, and Philip had gone out of his way to help Hélène establish a showbusiness career in London after the war.
But on the day he made his statement, the matter had been long forgotten. It was as if Boisot wanted to draw attention to himself – and because he did, certain facts suddenly began to emerge which suggested that the professor could indeed have been a royal love-child.
We can’t ask him now because he died at the age of 67 in 2011 – but the bare facts, carefully chosen by his mother Hélène in her memoir ‘Born Bewildered’, point towards Max having royal blood.
‘Unfortunately, far from quelling innuendo, Miss Cordet’s autobiography merely fanned it,’ wrote Philip’s biographer John Parker. ‘That way her book sold more copies.’
Miss Helene Foufouni married Mr William N. Kirby in the presence of HRH Prince Philip who was a childhood friend of the bride
Max had his school fees at Gordonstoun paid for by Philip, the prince was his godfather, and Philip had gone out of his way to help Hélène establish a showbusiness career in London after the war
Rumours had circulated for years that Boisot, the son of Philip’s childhood friend and confidante Hélène Cordet, was indeed Philip’s love-child
Philip and Hélène were childhood friends – she three years older – growing up in the affluent suburbs of Paris. Their parents had been thrown out of Greece – Philip’s with little money, Hélène’s with rather more.
If they were close it didn’t stop Hélène, a giddy extrovert, from romancing other boys – and in 1938 she married an Englishman, William Kirby, with a bashful-looking 17-year old Philip acting as best man.
The marriage didn’t last, and during the war years Hélène gave birth first to Max, then Louise. On the rebound she’d married a Frenchman, Marcel Boisot, but almost immediately he was posted to Cairo, and question marks remained over the children’s parentage for many years to come.
At the war’s end – this marriage over, too – Hélène brought the children to London and set up a career as an actress and nightclub singer. Soon she was on TV hosting a show called Cafe Continentale.
Philip had joined the Thursday Club, a notorious group of arty reprobates with a taste for wine, women and song. Through his contacts there he was able to get Hélène her own nightclub, the Saddle Room, which enjoyed a lucrative run during the 1950s and 60s.
More than that, he paid for Hélène’s kids’ education, with Max being sent to his old school, Gordonstoun. This was long after Philip’s marriage to the future Elizabeth II. Gossip columnists – knowing but not saying, or perhaps saying but not knowing – named Hélène as the ‘mystery blonde’ in Philip’s life.
And so Palace courtiers, ever suspicious of Philip’s activities, ensured that when the Coronation came around in 1953, Hélène was barred from the ceremony. The children went with their grandmother – and when asked, Hélène was obliged to say she’d ‘overslept’ and thus missed the greatest event in postwar Britain.
She liked to keep everybody guessing. Interviewed by a magazine, she said she ‘got hot under the collar’ watching Philip on TV. ‘[The way she spoke] was quite enough to spark off a story of major proportions,’ wrote John Parker.
Marcel Boisot, second husband of Helene Cordet and father of her children
Max Boisot married model Virginia Stevens
Max Boisot’s wife, Virginia Stevens (front) helped to sell programmes at the Lyric Theatre to raise money for the NSPCC
And then it emerged that, though the children carried the name Boisot, their ‘father’ had not officially claimed parentage of them until years later, shortly before Hélène’s memoirs came out. The question mark remained.
On leaving school Max, an exceptionally gifted young man, became an architect and then management consultant.
Louise followed in her mother’s footsteps and became an actress and pop singer, touring with The Beatles and Roy Orbison. Gerry and the Pacemakers wrote their hit ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch you Crying’ for her, but soon she retreated to her native Greece, married, and thereafter shunned the limelight.
For Max, it seemed as though he couldn’t get far enough away from Britain, its royal family, and the constant whispering – and so after marrying a young debutante, Virginia Stevens, he left the country for good.
By the mid-1980s he was Professor of Economics at the EuroChinese Business Centre on the outskirts of Beijing – about as far away from Buckingham Palace as he could get. And there the story would have rested – except that in October 1986 Philip, on a tour of China, went out of his way to visit Max.
It started the rumour-mill all over again and finally Boisot was forced to break cover.
‘I have heard these rumours all my life,’ he declared, ‘But they are ridiculous.
French cabaret singer Helene Cordet performed for guests at the London club she owned in 1956 where she performed most nights
Irene Mountbatten, Marchioness of Carisbrooke talking with British actress Helene Cordet, October 1953
Prince Philip’s god-daughter followed her mother into showbusiness and became a singer
Helen Cordet with her daughter who performed with The Beatles and Roy Orbison. Gerry and the Pacemakers wrote their hit ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch you Crying’ for her, but soon she retreated to her native Greece, married, and thereafter shunned the limelight
‘My father – my real father – lives in Paris and it is silly to say otherwise. All this goes back to [Philip and Helene’s] childhood friendship and there’s nothing more to it than that.’
What Max was too gracious to say is that if anybody stoked the rumours over the years, it was his mother Helene.
And it left open – to this day – the intriguing question of whether Philip was ever unfaithful to his wife.
And whether he left behind more children than the ones we know about.
