Royalty, celebrity and eccentricity – it was all so uniquely British
Across the country, people came together to celebrate the jubilee for the sheer joy of it – and for good causes
Under a glowering grey sky, the famous gasometers blotting out the skyline in the mid-distance, the 500 guests of the Big Jubilee Lunch at the Oval Cricket Ground were seated at their tables laid out on the pitch, drinking champagne and nibbling at petit fours.
Resplendent in a tropical suit, the event’s compère, comedian Stuart Holdham (“I’m just cheap and available, basically”) tapped his microphone to get the gathering’s attention. “Our special guests, Jedward, are on their way,” he said.
He was joking, of course. At the entrance to the ground, the Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were decanting from an Audi saloon, shaking hands with the Mayor of Lambeth, the MP for Vauxhall, and the chief executive of the Duchy of Cornwall (which owns the Oval). It was 11am. “A bit early for lunch,” murmured Prince Charles, smiling broadly.
Could any event celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee be more uniquely British? Royalty, celebrity, eccentricity; a Caribbean steel band from south London, two people dressed as rose bushes, apparently just for the fun of it, an African prince from Northern Ireland brandishing a ceremonial horsehair staff, an Indian bagpipe band and, most importantly, a legion of volunteers and representatives from a multitude of community charities and good causes who labour tirelessly year in and year out, with scant recognition and no personal reward, now afforded the rare privilege of a royal meeting.
The jubilee lunches have been run by the Eden Project, which first introduced the Big Lunch to bring communities together in 2009. Some 750,000 joined in for the first event. More than 8.5million people attended Big Lunches for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. This year it is estimated that up to 18million people have taken part at Big Lunch events across the country over the past three days.
The patron of the project is the Duchess of Cornwall, who is also the patron of the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), which this year paired with the Eden Project, launching the Platinum Champions Awards, for people who have made outstanding contributions supporting the NHS and vulnerable people in the community. More than 3,000 people were nominated for Platinum Awards, with 70 Platinum Champions and their families at the Oval.
Among them was Ken Ross and his wife Rachael, who founded the Portsmouth Down Syndrome Association in 2009, both of whom were independently nominated. With them was their son Max, 17, who has Down syndrome. The association is dedicated to offering family support and raising educational achievement levels among children with Down’s, and the Rosses helped to draft the Down Syndrome Act, which became law in April, and which makes provision for the needs of those with the condition.
“We’re over the moon. It’s such an honour to be here and to be recognised for what we do,” Mr Ross said. “It’s incredible what the Queen has done over the years, and what the Royal family do. They really do put in a shift.”
Another son, Jack, 24, is currently in Ukraine, delivering food and provisions with his organisation Van Without Borders. “Yesterday, he organised a jubilee party for soldiers and their families, with Union Jack bunting he’d taken over specially.”
Laid out on an enormous trestle table, was an extraordinary representation of the jubilee lunch – cakes, Scotch eggs and the Platinum Pudding – made of felt and wool by the artist Lucy Sparrow. Gyles Brandreth, wearing a woolly sweater with a corgi motif, paused to look on his way to his seat: “This is my natural habitat!”
“And here,” said Mr Holdham as the press corps and film crews were being led to their vantage points, “are this year’s Love Island contestants …” Definitely joking.
He issued instructions on protocol. If the royal guests pause at your table “nod and bob”. The Prince should be addressed as “Sir”; the Duchess as “Ma’am – to rhyme with jam. Failure to do so will result in two years’ hard labour.”
Across the pitch marched the Shree Muktajeevan Swamibapa Pipe Band, from Kingsbury in north London, taking their places in regimental order and striking up an air to welcome the royal guests.
They were led to the felt and wool feast, where Camilla paused to pick up a Scotch egg. For a moment it seemed she might eat it but she placed it back on its plate and moved on.
Mick Stanley, 81, a retired major with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, had come dressed in a full Union flag suit and tie. In search of something to pass the time during Covid – “I’m not one for sitting down, watching television and fading” – he constructed a sailing craft from two sheets of corrugated iron, with outriders, named Tintanic, which he has rowed on various waters around Britain raising money for Children on the Edge, which is providing reception centres in Romania and Moldova for Ukrainian refugees. He has rowed on Loch Ness and the lake at Blenheim Palace. A request to row on the lake in St James’s Park was refused “for security reasons”, he said. “I’m very keen to row on the lake in Buckingham Palace. I just asked Prince Charles. He didn’t say no …”
Meanwhile, on Windsor Castle’s Long Walk, organisers and volunteers had been up since dawn setting up one of the longest lunch tables in the country, and silently praying that the morning’s rain would have the manners to hold off for a while.
In the build-up to the jubilee weekend, Windsor’s lunch was mooted as being a potential new UK record, lining the 2.4 mile route of the historic tree-lined avenue. As it was, they abandoned the attempt because they ran out of tables, though there were still 488 of them, snaking down from the castle gates like a magnificent wooden conga line. They hosted over 3,000 people (plus many, many more picnicking alongside), each adorned with some 10,248 miniature Union flags of bunting, and – by a conservative count – several million platters of homemade sandwiches.
Competition to host the longest lunch was fierce. Goring in South Oxfordshire and Streatley, across the Thames in Berkshire, ran some 550 tables in a continuous 1km (0.6 mile) stretch across the bridge between the two villages, literally joining the two counties.
But Morecambe claimed the record, with town council chief executive, Luke Trevaskis hailing it “a once in a lifetime event. The whole promenade was awash with people, we managed 500 tables, seating 5,000 people [and] managed to extend it to 2.7km (1.67 miles), which is a new record. With the picnickers either side, we think there were over 10,000 people celebrating in Morecambe today.”
People had flocked from as far as Florida and New Delhi to join in the Windsor festivities, but James Evans, 62, and his wife Amanda, 60, had travelled the short distance from Crowthorne, Berkshire.
“We were always going to celebrate this, and managed to get tickets through a friend who’s only gone and got Covid on the day. But I’ve only ever known the Queen, and she’s phenomenal – whatever you think of the Royal family in general, she has devoted herself to this nation and 70 years is an extraordinary thing,” Mr Evans said, adding generously that he would, if absolutely necessary, “take a bullet for Her Majesty”.
Though supplied with Union flag tablecloths and placemats, people were urged to bring their own food and tableware, and under heavy grey clouds, they rose to the occasion as only Britons challenged to make themselves at home on grass can: candelabras, bone china, glass champagne flutes, even a homemade papier-mâché swan ice cooler.
The nation’s Tupperware has rarely been so useful, protecting platters of cheese, Victoria sponges and trifles from the elements. For the less prepared, there were always Windsor’s nearby eateries to help cater: one table
‘It’s just a great atmosphere, people are always so friendly, and it brings the country together, doesn’t it? You see what the Queen means to people’
Continued from Page 9 appeared to have brought the entire Mcdonald’s menu with them; another group arrived with a tower of Domino’s pizzas. To each his own.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their children also played a role in yesterday’s parties. A video posted on the royal couple’s official Twitter account showed the Duchess, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis baking cupcakes for a celebration in Cardiff set to take place in the afternoon. The caption read: “Baking cakes for the local community in Cardiff to enjoy at a Platinum Jubilee street party taking place today! We hope you like them!”
Footage that emerged on social media yesterday also revealed that the Duke and Duchess had unexpectedly dropped in on a jubilee lunch in Kensington.
Hen-dos, birthday parties and family reunions melded with the Queen’s celebration, as people young and old sought to be a part of a historic luncheon. Reena Kainth, 40, brought her six month-old son, Milan, in the hope that he might one day appreciate it. “He probably won’t remember the Elizabethan age, but he can look at these photos and show his own grandchildren and say: ‘Look, I was there’.”
Royal superfans Jim Murphy, 66, dressed in a full Union flag suit – “I got it online, and don’t get enough chances to wear it, really; you can’t just whip it on for a wedding” – and his wife, Davina, 58, didn’t have a ticket for a table spot, but drove down from Burbage, Leicestershire, to set up their own picnic alongside.
“It’s just a great atmosphere, people are always so friendly, and it brings the country together, doesn’t it? If you look at this, and all that’s happened over the last few days, you see what the Queen means to people,” Mr Murphy said.
With the lunch in full throng, at around 2.30pm, shortly after a Mexican wave of a toast to the Queen, the guests of honour arrived in the form of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, who emerged from a car to polite cheers, before charming their way down half of the tables.
“Where’s your picnic, Sir?” one felicitous reveller, who had perhaps been enjoying the jugs of Pimm’s dotted around, called to the Queen’s youngest son. “I think most of the weekend has been a picnic!” came the quipped response.
Prince Edward spoke for the nation. After four days of near-constant celebration, on Sunday evening the bunting still fluttered, the corks kept popping. Jubilation had taken over.
At a street party on The Chase in Clapham, south London, two lines of trestle tables stretched down the middle of the road laid out with immaculate sandwiches, elaborate salads and platters of asparagus with parmesan shavings. This was lunch done properly, as befitted the street party’s royal guest of honour, Princess Alexandra, who also attended The Chase’s party in 2002, for her cousin the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, and again in 2012, for the Diamond Jubilee.
Escorting the royal visitor through the festivities was local resident Prof Charles Mackworth-young, son of the late Sir Robin Mackworth-young, royal librarian at Windsor Castle between 1958 and 1985.
“This is a day for meeting up with old friends and making new ones,” said Prof Mackworth-young, addressing his neighbours as they sat down to eat.
“No one here was living on this street 70 years ago. In 1952, some buildings still had bomb damage, meat rationing was still in place.”
Throughout the intervening seven decades, the Queen had “dedicated her life to our service”, he added, describing her as “a platinum thread running through all our lives”.
At Pitchford Hall near Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, it may have rained on their parade, but that didn’t dampen spirits. Inside the orangery, a small television screen played footage from Pitchford’s Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977, when a street parade was held in the village.
Sheltering from the rain, residents piled inside the glass house and laughed as they spotted younger versions of themselves perched on floats and tractors over 40 years ago.
In Carlisle, around 2,000 hardy Britons braved chilly weather to gather in Bitts Park, forming a huge queue outside one marquee for cakes moulded into the shape of the monarch’s beloved corgis.
Lynn Elliot, a 55-year-old support worker wearing a Union flag in her hair, was celebrating with friend Kirsty Harkness, 40, her daughter Becca, 13, and three cockapoos. “I am a massive royal fan,” she said. “This is a celebration but also possibly the last jubilee we will have for the Queen so it’s a little sad.”
Back at the Oval, the Duchess of Cornwall cut a slice of the Platinum cake (lemon and chocolate), made by the National Bakery School in Lambeth, the oldest bakery school in the world, and said her thanks and goodbyes. “The Platinum Champions are the most wonderful people in the world,” she said.
“Now on with the show.”