Kate's 'for my d...' slip: the tabloid frenzy that guessed wrong

The slip that wasn't

In March 2013, The Sun reported that the Duchess of Cambridge had dropped "a big hint" about the sex of her baby during a solo visit to Grimsby. According to the paper, when a well-wisher handed her a white teddy bear, Kate said: "Thank you, I will take that for my d... for my baby."

A woman in the crowd, Sandra Cook, 67, told the paper she teased the duchess: "You nearly slipped up there, you were going to say daughter, weren't you?" To which Kate, smiling, replied: "We don't know yet... We're not telling."

The paper ran it as a near-confirmation: the royal baby — third in line to the throne — was a girl.

The outcome

It wasn't. On July 22, 2013, the Duchess gave birth to a boy: Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge.

The episode is a small case study in tabloid royal-watching: a half-syllable on a freezing day in Lincolnshire, stretched into a headline, that dissolved four months later. Kate's actual answer — "we don't know" / "we're not telling" — turned out to be the only reliable part of the story.

Archive summary, March 2013 (with the July 2013 outcome added), based on reporting by The Sun.