You know you’re posh when your pet mongoose nabs HM’s choccies
WHEN the Queen comes to stay, she brings chocolates. Like anyone’s favourite auntie, she turns up with a pressie, to say: ‘Thank you for having me.’
And because Her Majesty is jolly well brought up, she brings a second box to keep in her bedroom — so she can nibble on her favourites without having to share. Never underestimate the plain good sense of the royals.
But as Lady Pamela Hicks revealed on My Years With The Queen (ITV), the very posh are different from you and me, in unexpected ways.
Lady Pam — daughter of Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle — a lifelong friend of the monarch, chuckled as she remembered how miffed the Queen was when Naola nobbled her chocs.
Naola was Pamela’s pet mongoose. She had a free run of the family estate at Broadlands in Hampshire, and apparently possessed a good nose for treats. The little beast took a bite from every chocolate.
Don’t imagine you can become an aristocrat yourself, just by investing in a mongoose. The bar is set much higher than that.
Lady Pamela was browsing her family photographs with daughter India, smiling at memories of
Highland dancing and Commonwealth tours, when she spotted herself in a diamond tiara.
The jewellery was so priceless, she commented, that it was uninsurable. No broker would take the risk. Yet all ladies-in-waiting were expected to wear such baubles.
What did a girl do, India wondered, if she didn’t have a tiara at home? Lady Pam gave her a stony look. ‘That kind of family are not!’ she said — meaning that anyone who had to count the cost of a royal friendship couldn’t afford it in the first place.
At 91, her ladyship is eminently quotable and effortlessly scathing, a real-life model of Maggie Smith’s dowager in Downton Abbey. She was a childhood friend to ‘Lilibet’ and a bridesmaid at her wedding, as well as a first cousin to Prince Philip (of whom she has apparently been slightly terrified all her life).
Thinking back to endless crowds at state occasions, she remarked: ‘Waving all day long, Lilibet’s developed tremendous muscles in her arms.’
She remembered the day in 1952, watching her friend as she learned her father the King was dead and that she was now Queen: ‘I gave her a hug and then dropped into a deep curtsey.’
Like the tiara, it was all quite priceless. No wonder Lilibet has valued her company so much throughout their long lives.
The sight of crowds, whether thronging for a glimpse of royalty or simply enjoying a celebration, feels eerily dated now. Pandemic 2020 (BBC2), the first of a three-part documentary of how coronavirus shut down the world, opened with footage of New Year’s Eve parties. ‘It was beforetimes,’ said one interviewee sadly.
This format of archive film combined with intense personal stories was developed for a series about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It worked less well here: by focusing on a handful of accounts, the film-makers failed to convey how this was a crisis that affected everyone.
Much emphasis was given to the experiences of a Communist aid worker in Bogota, Colombia — almost a parody of the archetypal BBC2 subject.
Two Chinese video bloggers from Wuhan scolded the West for failing to lock down quickly enough.
My favourites were Ukrainian polka musicians who performed an accordion number called We Don’t Want You, Hey! Coronavirus. I’d call it catchy, but that’s probably the wrong word . . .