Show-stealing turn at the Royal Wedding

PARK up your republican prejudices and the Royal Wedding was pure theatre – from the pageboy overwhelmed by the fanfare to begin the ceremony, via the outrider wrestling to control his frisky horse along the whole length of the procession, to Meghan and Harry disappearing into the night in a vision of aerodynamic flawlessness.

Much has been made of Bishop Michael Curry’s address. I enjoyed the fire-breathing revivalist preacher’s sermon, but might I suggest that the reason there was much rolling of eyes (me too) was not the message or the delivery, but that he ignored a lesson from history, splendidly paraphrased down the years by people like Twain and Churchill: “If I’d had more time, I would have written a shorter speech.”

The Bishop broke a golden rule of pageantry – he got carried away and stole over twice his allotted time. Also, when he spoke of the power of love I kept thinking of singer Jennifer Rush – and pray what has the power of fire, which “made it possible to text and tweet”, got to do with the price of a spray of forget-me-nots?

The more he waved his hands about, the more I was distracted by the gold knuckleduster on his finger, something beloved of the hot gospellers waiting to ambush believers on TV’s gospel channels. Never mind the power of love to heal the world, the power of gold is to distract. The love of possessions is the root of all mistrust. Bishop Curry should first change himself before changing the world.

Personally, and excepting the happy couple, the star of the show was the elegant Kate in her recycled dress. You could hear the TV director: “Nothing to see here, move on.” I enjoyed Claudia Winkleman’s view that here was a sister-in-law who might have given the bride the greatest gift of all – wearing a dress she had worn three times before.

And when “Guide me...” was sung, Kate never looked at the words, not even when singing the third verse. But should we be surprised? When she made her first official appearance on Anglesey she had learnt the Welsh anthem and was deemed to be word-perfect.

Yes, Catherine comes across as more royal than the Royals. Meghan will find her a hard act to follow

– but then again, they may well complement each other.