Crikey, Sir Trevor, don’t mention those royal wedding calamities
HEROINE OF THE WEEKEND: Mari, 52, moved with her five-year-old daughter and shaman husband from London to the Amazon rainforest in Our Wildest Dreams (C4). Surviving deluges and hunting piranha became her new way of life. Brave woman!
Every wedding has one, the tactless uncle who, after a fourth glass of fizz, starts loudly raking up other marriages around the family that ended in calamity.
For the royal Family, that blundering relative was Sir Trevor McDonald in last night’ s documentary Invitation To A Royal Wedding (ITv).
As Harry and Meghan prepare to wed next month, it’s inevitable that people are going to remember how the Prince’s mother looked on her wedding day in 1981 at St Paul’s.
Sir Trevor could simply have murmured something about ‘radiance’ or ‘fairy tales’ and left it at that. Instead, he sought out Lady Di’s dressmaker, elizabeth emanuel, and quizzed her about fittings for the gown — forcing Liz to admit that, as the bride’s weight plummeted before the big day, the dress had to be altered repeatedly.
An oblique reference to Diana’s eating disorder didn’t strike quite the right note. But it got worse, as Sir Trevor scrabbled for ways to fill the hour ... and included footage from the ill- starred wedding of Princess Margaret and that odd Armstrong-Jones chap.
By now, many viewers must have had their hands over their eyes, muttering: ‘Do belt up, Trevor.’
Instead, he showed the infamous sequence of Fergie, ruddy-cheeked and goggle-eyed at her wedding to Prince Andrew, playing to the crowds from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. She wouldn’t kiss her husband until the throng begged her. That wasn’t so much a fairy tale, more a panto.
Luckily, Julie etchingham was on hand to steer the show on to safer, if duller, ground. We met the bakers who made the cake for William and Kate and heard how cheeky Harry pinched one of the chocolate decorations before it was finished.
The royal florists explained why two bouquets are traditionally provided: apparently, only one was made for the Queen and Prince Philip, and it was lost. We even heard from a former royal coachman, who recalled the months of rehearsal before the procession.
Still, this painfully slow hour had not been filled. Heaven forbid Sir Trevor would reappear, clutching a bottle of bubbly. He’d probably start dredging up edward vIII and Mrs Simpson.
In these embarrassing family situations, the safest thing to do is turn the spotlight on the children. A posse of primary school pupils was rounded up and told to play-act the wedding. Crammed into the pews to see two classmates exchange their vows, they were impeccably behaved. If only the same could always be said for the adults.
The wedding of ghostly innocent Laura and wicked baronet Sir Percival, in The Woman In White (BBC1), came round at shattering speed. One moment, the villainous groom was setting the date with a leer, the next Laura was walking down the aisle in more acres of white than ever.
Because a good melodrama can never have enough sinister drunks with exotic accents, a Count Fosco arrived to be Sir Perce’s best man. Fosco was Sicilian and sounded French, unlike the hero’s best friend — boozy Pesca, who veers from Spain to Hungary to Turkey in a single sentence. I blame european free movement.
This verbose serial, full of literary flourishes and stilted speeches, is too mannered to be really gripping. Unlike great victorian contemporaries such as Trollope and Thackeray, novelist Wilkie Collins did not create human characters we can still believe in.
But the cast are going full throttle: Charles Dance as the fey, selfish Frederick, and Jessie Buckley as the man-hating Marian, are especially fun. There’s more tonight — can’t wait.