Few can have missed the media feeding frenzy that arose last week over the latest in a long series of grimy revelations to have come out of Clarence House, the palatial London residence of the Prince of Wales and home ground to a veritable host of his sycophants and pilot fish.
If abrasive satire is said to be on the wane in England these days, a lot of the atrophy can be blamed on Prince Charles. When it comes to royal buffoonery, he does it all on behalf of the satirists and comedians. His behaviour is so productively absurdist as to leave very little to make fun of. It must be like coming on to the stage with some feeble card trick just after a master illusionist has made an elephant vanish. How much extra fun can be made of any man, never mind the heir to the British throne, who expresses his desire to be his mistress’s tampon?
Prince Charles’s poor mother must be kicking her corgis in despair at her son’s latest triumph — another in his relentless campaign to make a mockery of everything that, for more than 50 years, she’s tried to uphold in the way of dignity and restraint in the face of public commentary that is becoming increasingly cynical of royal excesses. The blessed — some say cursed — Windsor family, with its vast inherited estates, its priceless art collections (kept permanently secure from public view), its exorbitantly funded life of Bentleys and banquets, privilege, untold wealth and protection, belongs somewhere in the Middle Ages. In those unsophisticated times, subjects were truly subject, credulous and simple folk taught to believe royal succession was by divine authority. The kings and queens of yore had political and social significance — and lots of power. Today there’s none of that. All that’s left of a defunct glory are squads of beautifully trained parade-ground soldiers, some outside viewings of royalty’s opulent residences — something to attract the tourists. Of political relevance there is nothing left; of social callings it’s down to visiting basket-weavers and attending the Royal Variety Show.
Last weekend I watched the television coverage at the London cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, watched the British queen standing there and wondered what swollen disappointments thronged behind that pudding face — the Windsors never brought much to the world in the way of looks. Even Prince Phillip’s chiselled features got swamped by all those Hanoverian munchkin genes. Just look at the offspring.
As she gazed up at the cenotaph and listened to the bugled anthem for all the British war dead, was the queen reflecting sadly on immeasurable loss, all the young lives sacrificed in defence of their country and in fealty to the crown she bears? Or were her reflections tempered just a little by the thought of her preposterous son and how little he has earned any right to that crown when she dies? Will England truly end up with this booby on its throne? He can’t even control his own household.
How did Prince Charles screw up this time? What could possibly be worse, more plainly embarrassing
— his burlesque marriage to the dedicated self-publicist, Diana, or
his organically grown current girlfriend? If ever there was a prince, factory-fitted with the codes of the tabloid newspaper, Charles is he.
As of writing this column, everyone outside England knows what all the fuss is about. A high court injunction forbids the English press to print anything about it. Of the extremely imaginative, if not lurid, reports going around, all agree on one basic fact: what Charles was alleged to have been seen doing was (heaven save us all from eternal perdition) an ‘act of a homosexual nature”. The most persistent versions of what a shell-shocked manservant saw when he took in a breakfast tray to the prince’s bedchamber report that this time the royal turkey really outgobbled himself — no pun unintended.
Good luck to him, I say. What goes around comes around. At the very least this one could give interesting new emphasis to the clamour about a new Church of England gay bishop. But the extraordinary English high court gagging of details adds the final touch to a pitiful farce. How on earth can someone — king-in-the-wings and potential head of an embattled Church of England — be allowed to deny allegations about his sexual antics, without the allegations being aired? Is lese-majesty on the comeback trail?
I can just hear the bewigged barrister. ‘Melud, it’s a clear case of habeas porpoise? Now you see him, now you don’t.” We’ve all heard of royal privilege and immunity — indeed we see our own version of it in action in Mpumalanga on a weekly basis
— but this has carried it a bit far.
Last weekend Charles flew back from a Middle Eastern goodwill tour to tame the media ferocity, this time from his lavish country estate at Highgrove. Who knows what will have come about by the time this column gets published. Oh well, if all else fails, Camilla Parker-Bowles can always provide him with a place to hide.