Once upon a time in a mythical kingdom far, far away, a princess was born. She grew up surrounded by birdsong and the tinkling melody of a nearby brook and spent her days dreaming of a prince who would take her off to the Land of Oz where they would live happily ever after.
Alas, she didn’t manage to find a prince and had to settle for me instead. Yes ladies, that’s right. The author of this little old blog is about to hitch his wagon to the matrimonial star. Sorry to let so many of you down.
I’m walking up the aisle on the 14th May in a beautiful sea side town in New Zealand and while I’m not expecting much media attention and couldn’t care less if I don’t get any, I am a little miffed that the nuptials of a couple of upper class Brits is attracting so much attention.
Will and Kate sound like the characters from a bad American sit-com. They seem like a perfectly decent couple and I wish them well, but do we have to see and read so much about them?
When I lived in Ireland, British media overwhelmed us. You couldn’t pick and choose your viewing pleasure. For every quality costume drama on the BBC, there was a Princess Diana documentary or a fawning examination of the Queen’s fondness for small dogs with big ears (they remind her of her eldest son, I’m guessing). We were trained to hit the off button when the Queen’s speech was broadcast on Christmas Day, but during the rest of the year it was easier to sit back and take whatever the English were throwing at us. Royal “It’s a knock-out”, Charles talking to plants or the cringingly embarrassing way Britain lost the run of itself when Diana died.
When I moved to Australia, I thought I was safe from this picture book fascination with the British Royal Family. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything, it’s worse. Britons are lumbered with their royalty. Australians choose to have the 85 year old decedent of some Germans as their head of state.
Every few years, they have a referendum to ditch the Royals and become a Republic. But it always fails because the collective imagination of 22 million Australians can’t come up with anything better than paying homage to a pensioner at the other side of the world. The stumbling block appears to be how they would elect a head of state, in the absence of having one born first to the ruling Windsor family. It’s a problem that 170 other republics in the world have figured out, but is still perplexing Australians. My guess is that this constitutional issue is really a smoke screen and that Australia secretly likes a bit of the romance that royalty brings and more importantly that inertia is the strongest contributor to elections.
So it shouldn’t surprise me I suppose, that they are falling over themselves with unbridled enthusiasm when it comes to this upcoming wedding. All five free to air channels have cancelled their Friday night schedules to cover the event live and there will be more Australian journalists in London this week than you would find at a free bar at a media awards night.
Normally liberal newspapers like the Melbourne Age are carrying marsh mallow coloured supplements this week with sections called “What will she wear” and helpful links to websites selling commemorative mugs and tee towels. There is of course the occasional satirical piece but they all just add to the fascination with something that really should be left to the pages of Hello magazine and one of those lifestyle channels on pay TV.
Even those satirical efforts are under attack however. “Chasers” is the funniest thing on Australian TV. My favourite sketch was when George Bush came to Sydney and they dressed a guy up like Osama Bin Laden and he got through 3 security barriers and into Bush’s hotel. They also had a good go at lampooning the Pope when he came to Australia.
But the Royals are out of bounds it seems. The Chasers had planned to do an “alternative” wedding show from London. But Buckingham Palace has said that coverage of Will and Kate’s nuptials cannot be used “in any drama, comedy, satirical or similar entertainment” which will come as a surprise to most of the British media who have been taking the piss out of their Royals for as long as I remember.
The best we can look forward to on Friday is that Dame Edna Everage will provide commentary on one of the Australian channels, which at least means we’ll get a small laugh among all the pomposity.
Of course, by me writing about the royal wedding here, I’m falling into the same trap and no doubt encouraging you, my readers, to subconsciously wonder what colour hat the Queen will wear (I’m guessing Green) and to think about dresses and horse drawn carriages.
They talk about how two billion will watch tomorrow’s wedding. Nobody mentions that the other five billion in the world won’t watch, even though through the power of modern media most of them could. I’ll be part of that five billion. Not because I’m anti English. Personally I think they are great and every house should have one. As a butler preferably. They make great butlers.
I won’t be watching for the same reason that I don’t watch Oprah, don’t care about Brad and Angelina and don’t watch reality TV. I get my escapism through sport. And anyway, I have my own wedding to plan. My stag party is on this Saturday and I have taken responsibility to put together all the music for our big day. I also have to get all the commemorative mugs or tee towels sorted out. Seems you can’t have a wedding these days without them.
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