Celebs, debs and plebs on guest list
To be honest, I’m struggling to envisage what the royal wedding might look like. At one point, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appeared to have been tricked into a starchy, low-key affair at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, also known as ‘‘the venue of shame’’.
St George’s is the place embarrassing younger brothers and royal divorcees are ‘‘persuaded’’ to go. It’s tucked away, offering little opportunity for flamboyant arrivals or a balcony kiss. I assumed Harry was manoeuvred into agreeing to the place where Charles and Camilla had their blessing, because older members of the royal family and courtiers were worried he and that Wallis girl would create what the royals dread most: a circus.
Well, lo and behold, El Hazzadendo, prince of publicity ops, has just laid out plans for the biggest circus of the lot. He has not only invited Fergie, a woman who managed to make a mockery of the last wedding by proxy – catastrophically leaving her daughters to dress themselves – but he’s invited the Spice Girls and, it’s rumoured, his exes. He’s also commanded more than 2600 hysterical peasants to line the route.
The vibe is: modern feudal with a Pepsi ad twist. There’ll be primary schoolchildren waving flags alongside other ordinaries who have ‘‘shown strong leadership’’. I’m only hoping there’ll be space for some of the homeless people the local council tried to purge ahead of the wedding because they thought the royals would rather die than see a plagued foot.
If the royals are meant to reflect Where We Are As A Nation, I think we can safely say Harry’s plebtastic ‘‘people’s wedding’’ will capture the moronic splitpersonality hypocritical lunacy of everything we’re currently going through. It reeks, hilariously, of class anxiety. Harry and Meghan may want a fully ‘‘inclusive’’ wedding but 50 added Baldricks won’t hide the reality that royalty is a club you’re not allowed into.
When did we all become such ludicrous fantasists, comprehensively ignoring the unpalatable realities of royal life? Meghan may be learning fast but she’s not learning fast enough as far as I can see. On a charity panel last week, sitting next to Kate, William and Harry for her first engagement as a ‘‘working’’ (what?) royal, she explained ‘‘there is no better time to shine a light on women feeling empowered’’. She cited the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement as inspiration for her feminism, saying ‘‘people need to be urged to listen’’.
I’m sure she said other things as well, but the news presenters were too busy cutting through her stream of nonsensical BS to discuss which designer she wore. They also tirelessly analysed her use of the ‘‘duchess slant’’, a way of pressing the knees and ankles together ‘‘to protect a lady’s modesty’’. And so at the very moment Meghan was telling us to listen to female ‘‘voices’’, people were wondering how she stopped her knickers flapping out.
How, as a feminist, does she reconcile putting women first with the fact she is marrying into a family where women are secondclass citizens? At least Kate knows on what side her bread is buttered, barely hiding her boredom as she formed one part of what the media dubbed ‘‘the fab four’’. She did not wait 10 years to marry into this family only to discover it’s a nightmare vortex of healing hands and gush.
Harry and Meghan, by contrast, are a few brainstorming sessions away from giving the scrofulous crowds alms. As the family’s director of sentiment, Harry truly believes royal hands can cure illness. He tirelessly churns out multiple lachrymose PR ‘‘solutions’’. I guess it’s an improvement from the cold stuffiness of previous weddings. Reporting from Princess Anne’s in the Abbey in 1973, Jilly Cooper remarked that it smelt of ‘‘mothballs and eau de cologne’’. Guests wore ‘‘mildewed furs’’ and ‘‘no eye make-up’’.
– The Times