It was an annus horribilis for year-old Carole Middleton, writes CLAUDIA JOSEPH. Her business collapsed and the family became the target of abuse. But today all thoughts will be on her daughter Kate's health as she recovers from surgery…

All thoughts in the Middleton household will be on their daughter Catherine as she recovers from abdominal surgery.

And that's true even today, Carole Middleton's birthday.

In previous years she has celebrated abroad – and memorably for her 60th birthday, which she spent on the private Caribbean island of Mustique with pink champagne, grenadine cocktails, a jazz band and fireworks.

Today's 69th birthday will be a quieter affair, and not just because the eldest of her three children, the Princess of Wales, is unwell.

The past twelve months have been something of an annus horribilis for the Middletons, and for Carole in particular.

Kate's mother has only been seen in public once since her company Party Pieces went bust last June with £2.6million debts.

That was before Christmas at her daughter's Together at Christmas Carol Service at Westminster Abbey.

Carole avoided the Wimbledon and Royal Ascot tennis championships, both regular fixtures in her calendar.

In May, Prince William's in-laws were given a place of honor at the coronation, seated in row seven of Westminster Abbey, directly behind the royal family and next to world leaders.

But everything blew up the following month when it was announced that her company had gone into administration with debts worth £2.6 million. a malicious campaign apparently by bitter creditors, a cruel portrayal in the Netflix series The Crown, and her daughter's surgery.

While Party Pieces was bought for £180,000 by entrepreneur James Sinclair, who describes himself as the 'Millionaire Clown', there was no money to pay creditors.

Not only did the company owe the taxman £613,000 in unpaid VAT, and RBS £219,000 for a Covid loan, a string of family businesses were left with debts of around £456,000.

Disgruntled supplier Sultani Gas, which took more than £20,430 from Party Pieces for helium for balloons, accused Carole of 'betrayal'.

“What hurt me most was that I trusted her as the future king's mother-in-law,” a spokesman said, “and she simply betrayed me. It is absolutely unacceptable.”

The company's landlord, Lord Iliffe, on whose Yattendon estate the company was based, was also owed £57,480 in unpaid rent and faced 'serious financial consequences'.

Other creditors, according to the report, included Portuguese gas cylinder manufacturer Amtrol Alfa, which was owed £82,872, and party decoration firm Ginger Ray, which was owed £52,304.

It must have been felt personally by Carole, who founded the company at her kitchen table in 1987, when she was pregnant with son James.

The Middletons were then targeted in a brutal campaign in the village of Bucklebury, where they have lived since 2012, with posters plastered on trees and lampposts around their home.

However, Carole has her supporters as well as her detractors, including the new owner of Party Pieces, who claimed she was not the “captain of a ship that went down,” but “a lifeboat trying to save it.”

She stepped back from the mail order business in 2019 to spend more time with her grandchildren (Pippa has three children with husband James Matthews, Arthur, Grace, Rose, while James and wife Alizée have baby Inigo.)

It was at this stage that the company hired new directors and investors, including Steven Bentwood, a lingerie magnate, and financier and sports businessman Darryl Eales, leaving day-to-day running to a new management team.

The company was hit hard by the pandemic, and an international expansion in the United States, the Middle East and Europe further strained budgets.

“When she handed over Party Pieces to investors and shareholders it was in textbook condition,” said Sinclair, “a very nice business that regularly made £1 million profits a year on a turnover of £3-5 million.

“Unfortunately, the investors put together the wrong team with the wrong strategy… Mistakes were made.”

The latest – and final – series of the Netflix blockbuster The Crown hardly helped.

Carole was satirized and portrayed as an ambitious matchmaker who had arranged the marriage between William and Kate.

In an episode of the popular Mail podcast, The Crown: Fact or Fiction, her brother Gary Goldsmith attacked the show for misrepresenting his family.

“Carole is not this manipulative evil person who thinks of ways to worm her way into the royal family,” he said.

“First and foremost, Kate did a fantastic job getting into St. Andrews. She's a great girl, but it went unnoticed.

'It was all about, 'Kate, you have to do these things, you have to show your legs.'

'They're just not my family. That's not how Carole works.'

It is not known whether Kate, 42, will be healthy enough to see her parents or her siblings Pippa Matthews, 40, and James Middleton, 36, today.

While under other circumstances Mike and Carole would be celebrating abroad or perhaps at their £4.7 million Grade II listed home in Berkshire, at the moment they have cleared their schedules to help Prince William caring for their three grandchildren George, ten, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five.

The princess is expected to recover at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Great Park, a 40-minute drive from her parents.