Jean Heard has toured many theatres in the UK and performed in Edinburgh and the West End. She is now a guest entertainer on cruise ships as well as the presenter of Doris Visits Cruise TV. Her show, Royal Mistresses, is a hit one-woman show, which plays to a packed audience during the day on cruise ships. She performs monologues in costume as actresses who have slept with Kings. The most famous are Nell Gwynn and Lillie Langtry. Two completely different women with one thing in common. The other mistresses are Mary Robinson (George IV’s mistress) and Dorothy Jordan, William IV’s mistress. Interestingly, Mary Robinson managed to support herself, her daughter and often George IV with earnings from the theatre and also her poems and novels but, many people have never heard of her. Jean talks about Dorothy Jordan, another famous actress who bore William IV 10 children, from the perspective of Queen Adelaide. She was a German princess who married William fifteen years after Dorothy Jordan had died. Queen Adelaide is a tad bitter as in her heart she knows that her husband has never stopped loving his former mistress. All these monologues were written for Jean by historian and writer Joan Greening.
