I’m ready to serve, ma’am
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s announcement that they no longer wish to be ‘‘senior royals’’ has inspired me to make my own announcement. Forthwith, let it be known that this subject of the Commonwealth no longer wishes to be a ‘‘senior commoner’’.
Of late, I have felt my current status oppressive, believing that my lowly classification has limited me in my search for employment, and has affected how I am treated in general.
I have informed the Palace of my intentions to distance myself from my present status, and requested an immediate reclassification. More importantly, I have also asked the Queen to consider me for the position of senior royal.
Nature, or should I say unnatural selection, abhors a vacuum and I am willing to fill the vacancy tout de suite. I understand that Harry and Meghan, in their mid to late 30s and not even middle-aged, are far too young for the onerous task. Surely it would be better that the position of senior royal befits someone with considerably more rings around their trunk.
With all due respect, and the greatest of sensitivity to the position the monarch now finds herself in, it has come to my attention that a third position of senior royal has effectively become vacant.
It is my understanding that this position is currently being filled by a personage who now lives beyond the pale, and has been confined to barracks at his own private golf course at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, Berkshire. No longer able to perform public duties, there he will see out the rest of his days, practising his hazardous swing in private.
I bring to the senior job all the skills and experience required. First and foremost, I proffer a firm handshake necessary for meet & greet, and the strong wrist action necessary to keep a royal wave going through the long hours of exposure travelling in royal carriages.
To make the transition from senior commoner to senior royal a smooth one, I offer to bring to the party my own peeps, a team of professionals with vast experience in the deets of dealing with tax-haven tycoons.
At the beginning of my working life, I enjoyed employment as the agony aunt columnist Dawn Dusk, where I demonstrated strong communication skills. The experience qualifies me to offer sage advice to my fellow royals, both senior and junior, in the tricky days ahead as The Firm struggles to appear relevant and fit for purpose as we go forward into a new decade.
Because of my advanced age, I realise that it would be impossible to operate as a senior royal without access to the public purse, particularly in regard to my security needs.
Therefore, I would like to reassure The Firm that my financial remuneration requirements would be quite straightforward. Unlike the Sussexes, I will not be looking to make my own money in the world. With the minimum amount of fiscal fuss, I would be only too happy to access monies from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, and to receive the full sovereign grant.
If I was the successful applicant for this position, I would therefore require that, in order to demonstrate my excellent customer service skills to the British public, I would insist Harry and Meghan immediately remove themselves from their Frogmore Cottage home.
The public, having contributed over two million quid to the renovation of this property, have every right to expect that only a full-blown senior royal, rather than a brace of vacillating ‘‘hybrid’’ royals, should be domiciled there.
I’m no good at being gay. Now, before you scold me – quite sensibly – along the lines of ‘‘Phil, being gay is not something at which one can be good or otherwise – it is merely something one is!’’, bear with me while I explain. Like all gay men, I have a coming-out story. But mine takes an unfamiliar, decidedly non-heroic, turn. After telling my then-wife, along with family and friends, that I am indeed a gay man, I shuffled straight from the closet to the nearest (straight) pub – well, not strictly the nearest, since I ran away to Melbourne on the grounds that the anonymity of a new city might make it easier to drink myself to death. You see, at the time (I was 27), I felt with certainty that, despite my ultimately unavoidable same-sex attraction, I was ill-equipped to prosper as a homosexual.
In fact, I had spent my life until that point as a fairly vituperative homophobe, all the while striving to build as heteronormative a life for myself as possible. I dated girls, yelled at rugby, mastered the intricacies of the LBW rule, and drank beer and only beer like a real man. Deep down, feelings towards guys simmered, and once in a while rose to the surface, but I was masterful at batting them away.
As a teenager, I remember as if it were yesterday the shame-soaked butterflies that took hold in my stomach just by glancing at the LGBT section at Wellington’s Unity Books. As a student at Vic Uni, I would have no more entered a queer space than taken up astrophysics. I never dared act on my feelings. A double life seemed so fraught with fear and shame I couldn’t imagine pulling it off.
It was only when we got the internet at home that my inner demons, fuelled by a dozen or so cans of DB Export Gold, found a late-night outlet in the form of rudimentary chat rooms where other closet cases congregated. Soon after – weeks, not months – I became resigned to the appalling truth about myself. I was gay – but I didn’t have to like it.
Even opting for Melbourne was bound up in my deep-set internalised homophobia. I knew I wanted to bolt to Australia as soon as possible, but I rejected Sydney as an option purely because it seemed such a cliche´ d destination for a recently out man.
Despite a liberal upbringing, I had somehow imbibed a perniciously negative view about homosexuality.
Psalm 119:114