Dear Minister, Someone’s for the high jump!
THE Government has ruled that dozens of letters from the Prince of Wales to ministers will not be made public, but a small selection of them have been leaked to CRAIG BROWN.
Dear Secretary of State for Culture, FORGIVE me, but might I draw your attention to the novel that won the ‘ Bookie Prize’ earlier this week?
Called Bring Forth The Bodies, it is, I fear, merely the second part of a trilogy whose author is determined to traduce the fond memory of one of my dearest and most capable ancestors.
Henry VIII may well have had his faults. He could be a little off-hand with his wives, and from time to time he was obliged, poor chap, to have one or another of them executed for not ‘ pulling their weight’.
But this was another era, in which different standards applied. In those days, to have one’s head swiftly removed from one’s body with an expert blow from a spotlessly clean and well- sharpened axe was a matter of little consequence.
It is all too easy, I fear, to carp. A more ‘positive outlook’ is urgently needed. Might one be able to persuade the Royal National Theatre to perform a drama in praise of Henry VIII?
A tribute to this great monarch’ s abiding love of organic farming and homeopathic medicine, is, I believe, ‘ long overdue’.
Yours ever, Charles. To the Minister for Aviation, FORGIVE me for writing, but one does so out of grave concern for the safety of those poor souls who are obliged to travel ‘by air’.
One worries desperately that they are not being offered the right sort of ‘stepladder’ to ensure that their departure from the aircraft proceeds in comfort and, above all, safety.
I am particularly troubled by the recent case of a ‘balloon’ passenger called Mr Felix Baumgartner.
The poor fellow was apparently denied any form of ladder or ‘mobile staircase’ at all.
Instead, he was obliged simply to step out of his craft in mid-air and plummet at 834 miles per hour to ‘terra firma’. To employ the ghastly contemporary jargon, it worries me that this case is ‘sending out all the wrong signals’ to those wishing to travel by air.
Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a means by which every passenger is assured a reasonable finale to his or her journey without the sheer inconvenience of being hurtled head-over-heels 24 miles through space? Yours ever, Charles.
c.brown@dailymail.co.uk To the Home Secretary, LIKE so many people, I am an avid viewer of the documentary television series Downton Abbey.
As I am sure you know, it is a ‘fly- on-the-wall’ film, showing an ordinary British family in the 21st century striving to ‘ make ends meet’.
It affords those of us who are, to employ that awful modish phrase, ‘slightly better off’, a much-needed glimpse of what it is like to be ‘under-privileged’ and forced to live on a limited ‘ budget’ in a modest home, with a bare minimum of staff.
Can something be done for the poor Earl of Grantham, who has a tremendous lot on his plate? I am deeply concerned that, on top of everything else, the poor fellow has to worry about where the next penny is coming from. As a society, we should do whatever we can to help ‘lower middle class’ types such as the Earl and his family. With their cheery banter, love of ‘mucking i n’ and ‘cockney rhyming slang’, these people are, in my experience, the ‘ salt of the earth’. Yours ever, Charles. Dear Prime Minister, I HATE to bother you, because I know you are a ‘ busy little man’, but I thought I should let you know that, across the Atlantic Ocean, two men are, as it were, ‘ battling it out’ to become the next President of the USA.
This is, I fear, a cripplingly long ‘ process’, involving a terrible loss of dignity to all concerned. I might add that it is also ruinously expensive.
Would it not come as a ‘ huge relief ’ to that poor, benighted nation if they were to go back to what one might usefully term ‘the good old days’ and simply leave it to the British Prime Minister to appoint the next leader of the USA?
The American people are, in my experience, simply crying out to be governed by someone with dignity, know- how, a halfway decent English accent and, for want of a better word, ‘majesty’.
Incidentally, if no one else is prepared to take the job on, I would be willing to do it myself.
I have long thought that my friend Mr Stephen Fry could prove a very capable VicePresident, but I leave that decision entirely to you.
Yours ever, Charles.