Grim humour at stuffy wedding

Ah, the royal wedding. One shouldn’t find pleasure in a young woman being taken captive, but there was just so much to enjoy. I haven’t laughed that hard since my circumcision. First came the guests, tottering down through Windsor in the sunshine, each man in a rented morning suit, each woman in heels and a hat like a satellite dish. Celebrities led the way – footballers, pop singers, actors, television people – all delighted to be invited and pretending not to notice being noticed. Their fate was to be seated on hard chairs in the nave with three hours to kill before anything happened. And when it did happen they couldn’t see it.

Last to arrive were the royals, each according to their fashion: there was galumphing Fergie and her bull-necked ex, the surely-he’s-gay brother, a crusty duke still bearded like a Romanov, the nicely ineffectual Charles with his big strong second wife, Anne of the horses, and all the varied rest of them, long familiar, like so many cartoon characters. Finally the ancient matriarch and consort, entirely as always.

‘‘The Queen,’’ said the commentator, ‘‘is known to love a family wedding. And this will probably be her last.’’ Heads have departed spines for less.

Across the aisle sat the small and solitary mother of the bride, looking understandably outgunned. The satellite dish injunction had somehow not reached her in LA, and she’d opted for the slap-on pikelet. But still, it was her daughter they’d come to see, stepping out of the Rolls-Royce in a veil, looking like a spectacularly overdressed beekeeper. She was followed by approximately a hundred yards of netting, to the cod end of which several children had been attached. The scope for calamity seemed limitless, but she mounted the steps like a pro. And as she glided down the aisle she looked every bit the virgin bride, an infusion of fresh blood for a sclerotic monarchy.

Clergy floated about the barn in thick jewelled capes as worn by the leaders of badly run planets in Star Trek. All were delighted to pretend for the day that the church still mattered. When meeting royalty they simpered oilily.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, once an oil executive, got so much god into his few and sonorous lines about marriage, there seemed a danger of the occasion becoming religious.

But the danger was scotched by Bishop Curry. Bishop Curry is American and black and that is precisely how he preached. It was Sunday morning televisual evangelism, intense, high-wattage religiosity. So emotional was the bishop it was almost as though he meant what he said.

Experts at polite endurance, the royals looked down at their laps and feigned an interest in the order of service. The bishop found himself preaching to a phalanx of bald spots and satellite dishes.

At one point he called for an audience response. ‘‘Anyone come here by car?’’ he asked. Not a murmur. This wasn’t New Orleans. ‘‘By automobile?’’ he went on desperately. The continued silence was as wide and as deep as the Atlantic.

Behind the bishop sat the dean of the chapel, still as stone. Throughout the whole pulpit-rocking sermon the dean didn’t so much as blink. The bishop stopped in the end, and the service reverted to going through the ritual motions, like Christmas. And the right thing happened, the thing we’d come for.

Harry lifted the veil on his future and his future looked adoringly back. Though she makes her living performing for the camera you couldn’t help feeling that she did really like him. And he her. Which is good. They’re going to need it.