Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Lost in royal showbiz

Prince William and Kate Middleton can headline a royal wedding like Jennifer Aniston can open a movie. They can't

? Pull up a pink gin and tug your forelock at the first Lost in Royalbiz ? your daily look at the wedding the media would have you believe is all about class. And perhaps it is. After all, who are these fabled gazillions who genuinely care about it? One certainly doesn't know such people socially. Chances are, you think Prince William and Kate Middleton can headline a royal wedding like Jennifer Aniston can open a movie. Which is to say, they can't. They wouldn't even get top billing at one of the Reverend Moon's events, sure to be outdone in the charisma stakes by approximately 25,000 couples from suburban Seoul. Yet much like Jennifer Aniston's cinematic career, so-called royal wedding fever does sustain the media ? and as an avowedly republican newspaper, the Guardian will obviously be devoting eleventy thousand column inches to it all. If you don't like it, why not register your displeasure by putting in a full day's work on the bank holiday you're getting out of it? I know I will be.

? We begin with the launch of behind-the-scenes feature Know Your Pundits, wherein we celebrate the experts glossing the Royal Wedding for no-marks like us. First up is novelist Kathy Lette, who parlays a fleeting encounter with Kate Middleton at some polo event last year into a Reader's Digest article about what the couple "are REALLY like". As always when Kathy makes a foray into print, the only source of mild intrigue is how she will shoehorn one of her trademark sexual puns into what follows, perhaps in this case making arch reference to the Regina Monologues. Ah yes, call off the search. "I've no doubt," Kathy declares, "the down-to-earth KM has already concluded that the 'cream of British society' just means rich, thick, and prone to whipping."

? And so to the news that Ms Middleton's dress is now heavily tipped to be designed by dark horse Sophie Cranston, founder of little-known label Libelula. Alas, this column finds itself in the desperately vulgar position of being able to "exclusively reveal" something: namely, that Sophie was also a pupil at Downe House, the school at which Kate spent two ill-starred terms, and which would go on to inspire one recent News of the World splash, and a deluge of Fleet Street follow-ups. Should you require further detail, Sophie would have been a few years above Kate, but both girls were in Tedworth house. Indeed, following a painstaking journalistic investigation already believed to be attracting the admiration of the Pulitzer committee, I can further reveal that the girls' housemistress was the sensationally charmless Mrs Gwatkin, who once led me by my ear back to my own house (Aisholt ? we won all the lax cups), having caught me after-hours within her purview, despite my attempts to escape using a goods lift. (Hey, don't hate the playa, hate the game). Apologies if you're having trouble picturing this incident ? I did ask the Guardian art department to create a graphic showing the route from Tedworth goods lift, down the Kitchen Passage (the catering end, not the bit with the tuck shop in), across the Vestibule and back into Aisholt, but it turns out they had other stuff on.

? As for Prince William's appeal to the wider dominions, much light is shed by a recent piece in the Sun by Kathy Lette, who, the paper informs us somewhat vaguely, "knows Wills". "Egalitarian, earthy, sceptical Aussies detest pomp and ceremony," explains Kathy. "We think the cream of society just means rich, thick and prone to whipping."

? From the Downing Street press office, no less, comes official confirmation that wedding attire means a lounge suit for David Cameron, to whom almost nothing is more important than not appearing posh. Yet does this go far enough, I inquire of No 10? Couldn't the PM wear something by Sean John, accessorised with a nine-carat gold-plated necklace bearing the legend "Mo money, mo problems"? "Is this a serious inquiry?" asks a spokeswoman. Deadly serious. Requires an official response. "I highly doubt the prime minister is going to wear a tracksuit to the royal wedding," she eventually obliges. Long may this co-operative mindset continue.

? To the Sydney Morning Herald, finally, where a certain royal expert is struck by a flash of inspiration. "Australians have chronic sceptic-emia," reveals Kathy Lette in a trenchant comment piece. "We detest pomp and ceremony. To us, the 'cream of society', just means rich, thick and prone to whipping." It never loses its bite, does it? Let its author henceforth be known as Regina Dentata, and not leave it long before granting us players of Lette Bingo a full house.


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/apr/19/lost-in-royal-showbiz-fans

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