Countdown to the royal wedding - Part 2

A friend of mine at court reveals the real reason for Liz’s absence from the civil ceremony. She is embarrassed by her aging spouse, and in particular his habit, which she admits privately is deliberate, of breaking wind explosively at the most inappropriate moments.

On most occasions, where formal functions are held in large halls or auditoria, the effect is minimised. At royal banquets, the guests put it down to the peculiar ingredients or the traditional horrors of British cookery. Things are so bad, that in the post-prandial period, the corgis are fitted with miniature gas masks. These events are heralded by shouts of “LIFTOFF!” or “Bombs away!” in a croaky old voice and this is a signal for members of the household to take cover. Even in the last years of her life, the queen mother could cover 50 yards in little over 15 seconds when news of her son in law approaching reached her. Zimmer frames were abandoned all around Clarence House, gin bottles tipped over, creating lakes of sticky fluid, causing unfortunate rumours to abound about her lack of control, but anything was better than being caught in the fallout zone.

This is all very well, but the prospect of this happening in a confined area such as a registry office was too much for Liz to contemplate, hence her withdrawing on the grounds that she had to open a vinegar processing plant in Slough that day. It is all made worse by that silly woman Camilla, who being of upper class stock finds these episodes enormously amusing, and never tires of them. Although I have never heard it myself, she apparently finds these episodes so amusing that she guffaws like a coyote in orgasm, an eardrum piercing shriek that Liz abominates.

One fact about the duke of Edinburgh that is not in the public domain, is that he is not really prince Philip of Greece. The real prince ran away with a woman from Caracas, and opened a marketing consultancy on the outskirts of Detroit in the 1940’s. He may still be alive; I got a Christmas card from him in 2002. The impostor was known to my Uncle Henry as Len Jessop, who owned a hardware store on the outskirts of Worksop. Len was a great mimic, and could do virtually all accents, but his impersonation of a Greek prince was a constant puzzle to Uncle Henry. “He’s as common as muck, and God help him if he has to perform state duties – he can’t stand foreigners. He’s bound to cause some major problems”, he predicted. Nevertheless, despite the queen no doubt being exposed to some of his more base personal habits, he seems to have got away with living for over half a century at the tax payer’s expense. Uncle Henry only saw him once after the wedding, when he was introduced to the royal couple at a ceremony to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the Vale of Belvoir syphilis epidemic of 1771. Henry said “Good morning, Your Majesty, Ay up, Len you great lanky streak of paralysed piss”. To his credit, Len hardly batted an eyelid, but poor old Uncle Henry was carted off to the tower for 2 weeks to scrape raven shit off the turrets or some such.