Markle sparkle
... a potent blend of history and hype
MARKS & Spencer took the gold medal for clever marketing. The sign above the shop in Windsor has been changed to Markle & Sparkle in honour of the bride at today’s royal wedding, though there might be a few regrets.
Just yesterday, Meghan’s nephew, Tyler Dooley, a licensed cannabis grower in Oregon, announced he was marking the occasion by selling a potent new hybrid version of the drug which he has called Markle Sparkle, though it won’t be available in Marks & Sparks anytime soon. Or, indeed, ever.
Houses all along the route of the post-wedding procession are decked out in union flags, pictures of the couple, and even life-size cutouts. And in the shops near the castle itself, the usual tat was on offer – the Harry masks are so lifelike I was startled to see him riding in a carriage through the town on Thursday, only to realise it was a Japanese TV presenter.
So massive was the media presence that while I was sitting outside a coffee shop, a German reporter asked a man if she could interview him only for him to smile and say he was also a journalist.
She looked hopefully at me, until I said ‘so am I’, and we all burst out laughing.
One man told me that foreign TV channels had paid as much as £30,000 for balcony rooms in hotels near the castle to turn them into makeshift studios, while friends who live in Windsor knew of families who had made the price of their annual holiday by letting out rooms or even entire houses on Airbnb just for the weekend.
At teatime yesterday, Harry and brother William, made a surprise appearance outside the castle, causing a massive bottleneck on the narrow streets. Windsor and Eton train station has been rebranded on every platform as Harry and Meghan Central, just to get the crowd in the mood.
There are hundreds of police, and army snipers on roofs ready to take the shot if needed. Everyone is so jittery, even confetti has been banned, because anyone seen throwing anything in the direction of the open landau carrying the couple to the reception will quickly have his or her collar felt. That, of course, is the worst-case scenario. The forecast is for the hottest day of the week. The mood is celebratory and very good-natured, and M&S definitely got it right. The Markle Sparkle clearly is very potent indeed.