What’s up with the Royals

WhatsApp group goes down well with British aristocracy, but can also be a source of stress and irritation for families

Christmas used to be about handmade paper chains (and the odd chain nestled in a velvet box, if you were really lucky).

But now, as revealed this week by a “close friend of the British royal family”, the festive period is all about the “family text chain”.

In other words, Princes William and Harry, and their spouses, all belong to what is known to us commoners as a family Whats App group.

It is reassuring to know that being in line to the throne gives one no immunity from this tyranny, with all its passive-aggressive asides and misused “lols”.

The free messaging app now has one billion daily users, which means there are a lot of family groups out there. And it does make life simpler, allowing us to share photos and videos easily, make arrangements across sprawling groups of people, and connect relatives in far-flung corners of the world.

Plus, you can give your group a name, say “Dukes and Duchesses” or “Royal banter“, and a picture – an embarrassing photo of a family member in fancy dress, for instance.

But Christmas is a particularly fraught time for any WhatsApp chain. It has the magical ability to transform innocuous elements of life – woolly jumpers, poultry, Sellotape – into sources of stress and irritation.

There are the Christmas meal groups, Nativity play costume sharing groups, school festive fête planning groups . . . all with their notifications pinging on to your phone like a child pulling at your sleeve, begging for attention.

My 12-year-old lost her mobile for three days and on retrieving it found that she had more than 4,000 notifications (or “notifs” as pre-teen parlance would have it). Loudest and most insistent of all these is the family WhatsApp group. The first time I heard someone talk about theirs, five years ago, I thought it sounded rather sweet.

I imagined a safe, cosy place to share news of children’s achievements and funny memories. I was soon disabused of this romantic notion by friends embroiled in family message-based dramas – mostly prompted by illconceived late-night contributions. Who knew that a simple inquiry as to whether anybody actually likes bread sauce would lead to non-speaking?

One pal told me of the angst caused by the uncle who wanted everyone to outline, in humiliating detail, exactly how much alcohol they intended to drink on the day, in order for him to get a good deal at Majestic.

By the time Christmas came, concerned relatives were planning to stage an intervention for those with the highest levels of consumption.

The WhatsApp group itself might not cause division, but it can reflect the ones that already exist within any family. Splinter groups begin as a discreet way to discuss your mother’s joint gift, but soon descend into a festival of whinge. Then the splinter group splinters to form a new one, so you and your sister can pull everyone in the first group to pieces. And so it goes on; the groups proliferating like pine needles under the tree. Inevitably, this leads to mishaps.

My friend Bee wrote an official Christmas present list to share with her family and then an unofficial one for her sibling group, which included such witticisms as “cousin: no sense of humour” and “Mom: will find fault with whatever I give her”. In the chaos of Christmas she, of course, pasted the unabridged version into the wrong group.

Like your relatives themselves, you can’t choose your WhatsApp family group – and it’s awkward to leave. They take seconds to set up, but years to wither away. Gradually, the number of brisk announcements that “Paul has left the group” accumulate, until only the originator is left. –