No doubt Tribune readers all had their own way of celebrating the big event, although I suspect many will have turned their backs on the television and opted for a day out in the country.
Channel 4, while not giving us wall-to-wall coverage on the day, typically entertained us after the event, with an unofficial royal wedding. Rather than the bride and groom licking each other’s lips of the balcony of Buckingham Palace, we were instead treated to a snapshot of Britain as it prepared for the great day.
An anthropology professor in south London was planning his own event – a guillotining. Aware that Kate and Will are quite popular with the public, he and his chums had decided instead to behead Prince Andrew. Naively, they assumed the police would happily allow the event to take place, even though it was in central London. No chance. Instead, the academic was arrested and carted off to the local dungeon by an army of police officers in white vans. The executioner was left shouting abuse at the local constabulary. Twenty-four hours, later the prof was released without charge, although the seized guillotine still remains in custody. Another fine example of police time wasting. It was just a bit of harmless fun. And there we were thinking that David Cameron had insisted that everyone should be free to celebrate the event as they wished.
Meanwhile, Rita in Durham boasts the world’s largest collections of royal wedding paraphernalia and has a room crammed to the ceiling to prove it. She planned to go down to London to see the wedding. A day before the event, she was already camped outside Westminster Abbey determined to get the best view. Sadly, the police carted all the chairs away from the campers and made them stand for the next four or five hours. But it was worth it, she said, especially as she seemed to have won the sweepstake on guessing the length of Kate’s train.
Up in Manchester, a gay couple planned the pub event of the year in the city’s gay centre. Dressed up to the nines, they awaited an invasion of gay royalists and oohed and aahed as Kate shuffled into her carriage in all her regal splendour. Sadly, our gay couple were left to quaff champagne on their own.An anarchist party celebrated in its own way with a specially-composed punk song whilst a talented street artist recreated Will and Kate as Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon. And just to show that Britain isn’t all white and middle class, two ethnic families gave the wedding their approval. A homeless man, who had been a soldier in Bosnia, wandered the streets and ended up in a café, sipping his coffee and watching the screen on the wall. He was quite moved by it all and genuinely wished them well.
As for me, I staged my own protest by slipping across the Channel, in full knowledge that I would be safe in republican France. But what did I find? Republican France had gone wedding mad as well with wall-to-wall coverage on the day of the event and just as much the following day. It was the number one item on the news for at least three days. The entire nation seemed captivated by it. I’m still not quite sure why – whether it’s to do with the French no longer having a royal family or just the fact that all France likes a pretty woman. I suspect it’s the latter. As the ceremony reached its crucial moment, I raced off to the local boulangerie only to be confronted with disbelief from the bread lady who had reluctantly torn herself away from the TV in the backroom where the prince was just about to place the ring on his beloved. “Why are you not watching the wedding?” she demanded scornfully. I tried to explain my miserable adherence to republicanism and, thankfully, I was helped by another discerning customer. “They’ll be getting divorced soon”,’ he joked. I yelled in agreement. “Give them a couple of years. All the same, that family.” But the bread lady wasn’t amused. It was the same with all our friends. For the next two days, I had to pretend that I’d watched the wedding and nodded approvingly when I was told how pretty the bride was and how elegant, yet simple, her dress was. Who cares? France: republican? It just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover.
