Hello!, Is It Us You’re Looking For?
I was 11 years old when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, Queen of Hearts, the People’s Parable. I got quite excited, as 11-year-old girls will about that kind of thing. I even wrote a song about it, which I can remember to this day. (No, I won’t be singing it for you.)
Today’s announcement that their son Prince William is to marry his girlfriend Kate Middleton next year induces much less enthusiasm. I should stress that the intervening years since 1981 haven’t turned me into a raging republican, but they have washed away much of the conventional middle-Englandiness of my childhood and have made me give a much smaller toss about what colour hat the Queen is wearing and what her corgis are called. Nevertheless, I don’t dislike or object to the Royal family. I would rather have a monarchy that brings tourists in, than a repressive regime that bans foreigners completely… but I digress.
Back in 1981, a Royal Wedding was special. It brought the country together. What brings the country together in 2010 is the X Factor and Heat magazine. The latter will, of course, milk the nuptials for all they’re worth, but I can’t help feeling that William and Kate will just blend right into Katie and Kerry and Peter and Alex and Jude and Sienna on those endless, mind-numbing glossy pages, and that our will to care, if it was ever there in the first place, will be lost. Ironically, Diana probably did a lot to nurture the public’s acceptance of, and need for, a celebrity culture, so if William and Kate get lost in the celebrity crowd, and don’t receive quite the undivided public attention that she did thirty years before, well, they know where to look. Maybe they should book the sparkly pink pumpkin carriage now, just to be on the safe side.
Something Blonde 
Maybe they should have staged a Lloyd Webber-helmed audition show to find William’s bride. He could have ended up with SuBo. Or Wagner.