History of royals taking far-right turn
Prince Harry’s Nazi salute was a disturbing photo a few years ago. I remember it vividly. He was fooling around at a private party, but forgot the paparazzi outside.
I expected the infamous salute to be included in the documentary, Royals, British Aristocracy and the Nazis (Sky 73, Monday), but it wasn’t his. It belonged to Granny.
In footage, revealed recently, Princess Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and Edward VIII, try out their own sieg heil.
It’s a photo the teenage princess would prefer to forget. The 1930s was a tempestuous decade, dominated by maniacs, monsters and monarchs. At the heart of royal intrigue was Edward VIII, the philandering Prince of Wales.
He’d had conquests before meeting the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.
What started as an affair soon became an affair of state as he insisted on marrying her. Queen Wallis didn’t sound right to the British public, nor to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
In addition, Simpson was swept away by right-wing movers and shakers, and soon Edward supported her anti-semitic views.
He quickly adopted a soft spot for everything Adolf. In the end his only alternative was to abdicate before his coronation.
The documentary focuses on the Windsors as they’re banished to Europe and become captivated by Nazi hierarchy.
Only a successful German invasion of Britain could see them return. It never happened. They’re shunted off to the Bahamas and, after the war, live a life of tawdry luxury in France.
The Netflix series, The Crown, has spawned so much TV trivia about the Royals and this is just another example, yet it’s scary. If, in those lonely months when only the Allies fought Hitler and his hordes, King Edward and Queen Wallis were poised to reclaim Buckingham Palace. Would it have been renamed the Simpson Savoy?
When William Roache (Ken Barlow) claimed he wanted to be the first centenarian to work in a soap, you realised Coronation Street would be around for another 60 years. The soap will never become a hand wash.
In Coronation Street: 60 Unforgettable Years (TV One, Monday), stars shared their memories, secrets and relationships. It was refreshing as they recalled the good, the bad and the ugly.
Over the decades Steve Mcdonald has had seven marriages, twice to Tracy Barlow. It promoted Gail Platt to say she had two to go. She won’t remarry Richard Hillman. He was a serial villain who tried to dispose of the entire Platt family before drowning himself.
Viewers took Coro Street to heart and you paid the price for being infamous. Actor Brian Capron (Hillman) has hardly starred since, however, he did play ‘‘Hoppy’’ Hopwood in Grange Hill, which caused me to stay at home and only sneak out at night.
The doco couldn’t do justice to six decades of The Street. It satisfied those whose interest was a mile wide and an inch thick but, for every personality, there was another who didn’t make it. Yes, the tribute show deserved a second part.
Coronation Street: 60 Unforgettable Years was full of scenes, characters and sequences that remain vivid in the imagination.
There were two train crashes, Stan Ogden’s death, Deirdre’s imprisonment, Mike Baldwin’s affairs and Queen of the Rovers, Bet Lynch, with scaffolding hair, large earrings, leopard print and flaunted cleavage. It resembled the Foxton turnoff.
There were many memorable quotes such as Bet – ‘‘ A smile is a lid on a scream’’; Blanche – ‘‘If the corpse were happy, he’d tuck in with us’’; and Ena Sharples, paying homage to her dead mother – ‘‘She just sat up, broke wind and died’’.
I’m hoping the exposure on 1000 Pound Sisters (TLC, Mondays) helps to pay for their surgery. Otherwise it’s grubby exploitation as two grossly overweight sisters, Tammy and Amy, attempt to lose weight so they can staple their bodies and rediscover their toes.
They visit bariatric surgeon Dr Charles Procter in Atlanta and try his scales. Amy loses 10 pounds in a month and hits the scales at 390lb.
Tammy loses 8lb and plummets to 600lb. Their rate of loss will see them ready for cosmetic surgery in 2040.
Watch out, Coro Street, there’s another long-running soap in the making.