PRATTLING SCHOFIELD AND HOW I YEARNED FOR A DIMBLEBY
THE dress, the dress, my kingdom for a scrap of information about the dress. As the hour drew near for Meghan to reveal herself as a bride to a global television audience of around two billion, a contagion of desperation spread across British TV networks.
It was really rather charming that Palace officials hadn’t released any details about Meghan’s gown and that the great unveiling of the veil would be a glorious surprise to all.
Yet no information is a no-no for those with airtime to fill, resulting in an increasingly demented kink to their bleached grins, plus much rococo speculation. What kind of a dress would it be? ‘A dress that has been talked about more than any other dress over the last few months,’ breathed Kirsty Young for the BBC.
To fill time, broadcasters drafted in contributors with some vague connection to fashion, weddings, royalty or a combination of none of the above, then pressed them repeatedly for details they didn’t have.
On Sky News, dress designer Amanda Wakeley could not embroider. ‘I think there will be an element of fairytale about it. It might be Ralph & Russo, who knows? It might be Stella McCartney, who knows?’ she shrugged.
Who knows? No one knew. On ITV, there was deep-dive guesswork about whether Meghan would wear a tiara.
‘I am 50-50 if she will or she won’t,’ ventured one bold expert.
ITV also had former Tatler editor Kate Reardon reporting from a field outside Cliveden. She was none the wiser.
Minutes later, Meghan hurtled past in a Rolls-Royce, showering Kate in a cloud of loser dust.
The dress! What could Kate see? ‘It is slightly off the shoulder,’ she reported.
Over on BBC1, Kirsty Young was more insightful. ‘She is wearing a veil but, for now, not much more than that,’ she said, as the nation guffawed.
Harry and Meghan’s wedding was not a state occasion, so broadcasters had gone all smart casual with different lead teams to reflect this most modern of marriages. Instead of Dimblebys nimbly dimbling over arcane constitutional matters, the Beeb had Young and co-host Dermot O’Leary from The X Factor.
Was that entirely wise?
ON ITV, peerless Julie Etchingham and prattling Phillip Schofield sat on a mauve twoseat sofa, while Sky had Kay Burley somewhere in the grounds of Windsor, playing football with random children. No, I don’t know why either.
Meanwhile, Kirsty and Dermot were a kind of Mr and Mrs Everyman.
She was totally into it, ‘nearly in tears’ before 9.30am and couldn’t stop talking about the outfits. In contrast, he slouched about the set, huffing like a bored pageboy.
‘That was a beautiful romantic dress that we saw there, did you see that beautiful flowing silk one. Bell-sleeves, talk to me about bell-sleeves. Look. A peekaboo shoulder!’ she would exclaim, as Dermot squirmed in his rompers.
Still, she knew everyone and talked amusingly about frocks. Oh, how I wish every event like this had a Chick Channel, where we could click the red button for Kirsty, who would talk about posh people in hats for three hours.
Meanwhile, there was a great deal of confusion about which guests were Meghan’s co-stars in the TV drama Suits. Or should that be suits?
A beanpole in a mustard frock clung on to a grey, shuffling old man in an ill-fitting lounge suit. Good grief, it was the Clooneys!
Amal was as elegant as ever, but George looked like a minicab driver giving her a hand across the Windsor cobbles.
‘It would have been nice if he had worn a morning suit,’ sniffed menswear designer Ozwald Boateng on ITV, and he was right.
Schofield, who can’t bear any celebrity being disparaged, moaned that Boateng was being ‘critical’. A bit rich considering Schofield’s own fashion contributions were of subDermot levels. ‘Lots of yellow, lots of pink, a bit of aubergine here and there,’ he said
ANYWAY, here come the Beckhams. David shook everyone’s hands, whether they wanted him to or not, while Posh looked thunderous, as if a wasp was trapped in her bra.
‘It would be nice if Victoria Beckham would smile,’ said Kirsty.
Schofield made an oily attempt to explain the weirdo parapsychology of a grown woman who refuses to smile in public: ‘She wants to smile. She is such a smiley person but she chooses not to at events like this.’
Does anyone else have anything to say? ‘Victoria is wearing a very elegant, it looks like a deep blue?’ pondered Kirsty rhetorically.
Fascinating stuff, but sometimes one yearns for the celerity and starch of a handsome and dashing historical expert.
Sound the trumpets for Alastair Bruce of Crionaich, Sky’s resident royal buff, who was straining hard to put a bit of context into Meghan Markle becoming a royal.
‘Could she ever have conceived the idea of coming into a family whose ancestors Shakespeare wrote about and a building that Shakespeare knew?’ he boomed in a stream of consciousness where no factoid was too obvious.
He was also very good at melding the old with the new.
‘William the Conqueror came striding down this very hill... and there is Sir Nicholas Soames [the Tory MP].’
I needed Kirsty to tell me what precise shade of blue Sir Nicholas’s trews were, but she was otherwise engaged.
For behold, Meghan was at the West Door, in a dress that was no longer a mystery.
As the ceremony began, the broadcasting babble died down, the voices fell silent and we were all swept away in the moment. Yes. Even Dermot.