/ 6 April 2005

Britons invited to bet on latest royal wedding mishap

It has already suffered a royal snub, planning gremlins and a last-minute postponement. Now, the British are being asked to bet on the next mishap to hit the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

The cheeky offer from a firm of bookmakers came after the wedding was put back by a day to Saturday to avoid a clash with the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

Previously, the happy couple were hit by the news that Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, will not attend the marriage ceremony, just a blessing service afterwards.

The venue also had to be switched from Windsor Castle, the royal residence just west of London, to Windsor’s town hall after officials realised that licensing the castle for the civil ceremony would have meant allowing other couples to wed there.

In odds released on Tuesday by bookmakers William Hill, Britons can gamble at 33-1 that a fed-up Camilla will stand Charles up on the day.

The odds for the Prince to do the same are 40-1, while 25-1 buys a bet that Charles’s son Prince William will lose the couple’s wedding rings.

Even more hopefully, the chances of snowstorms or floods were given at 100-1, while the odds of aliens landing in Windsor on the wedding day were 10 000-1. — AFP