The Royal Family

Wendy Murray, from my writers group, wrote a very funny piece this week on the Royal Family. After much begging she has graciously allowed me to post it here:

They said that Princess Anne looked like her horse. That was just unkind. She had a long nose which made it hard for her to smile and she had even longer hair that should have been layered when she had her second child and now she’s stuck with a frizzy brown sheet that she has to pleat somewhere behind her ears that stick out, but not like Prince Charles’. They used to call him Dumbo, because he had this pointed head like an acorn with these large flaps either side. If he hadn’t had so many pictures taken of him he could have had them pinned back but it would have been the death of credibility if he’d done that on top of making cheese. He flippers his hands behind his back but not as much as Prince Philip. But then Prince Philip was always walking behind the Queen which must have infuriated him because he’s quite a bossy sort. Calls the Chinese “ chinky-eyes’ and gets away with it. If he was the Duke of Boston instead of the Duke of Edinburgh he’d have been impeached by now. They used to say he’d had an affair with Anna Massey and visited her house in Holland Park but they forgave her because she was married to Jeremy Brett who went from D’Artagnan to Sherlock Holmes and unveiled his homosexuality inbetween. And speaking of homosexuals there was many a sailor in the navy who could swear they knew of a midshipman who had a sexual relationship with Prince Andrew, but in his defense he did go out for many years with Koo Stark who was a sort-of porn star and he did marry Sarah Ferguson who apparently took some friends on a tour of Buckingham Palace and when they came to the throne room where subjects knelt on a red velvet stool to be knighted she said, “ Oh, we haven’t done it on that yet, have we darling?” And Edward , of course, had to drop out of the Marines, which was probably a silly choice of uniform, if you have to pick one, because they always said he was probably gay and he proved that one by going to work Lloyd Webber doing musicals in the West End. There’s some footage of him singing and dancing and it’s not even slightly good. And then he married that Sophie who looked a bit like Diana, in poor light, at long distance, from the back.
But Charles is doing better now. He plays with his signet ring as well as flippering his hands which shows forward movement. I’m not sure what William is going to do about his hairline. Really, I’m not. He was the oddest looking little boy. Diana probably trusted the gene pool but for the rest of us there was a big worry on the Dumbo front. Then he emerged into those glorious teenage years where he looked like he had an apricot tracking light. Adonis at St. Andrews. And everyone forgave him for dumping that nice Kate even though her parents had been to Sandringham for the weekend – actually they would probably have forgiven him for picking his nose in public, because he was going to wear a crown so well and then……then his hair started to get fuzzy at the front which everyone hoped was hat hair and maybe that’s when he should have gone to work with seedlings on a Tibetan Plateau and he could have had some quiet time to let the hair transplants grow in, but now he has to let it go from fuzz to fluff to inching backwards in full public view whilst his brother, with the pale carrot lawn on his head, smokes himself to death, parades in fancy dress as a Nazi, has a girlfriend with a very geographical name like China or Chelsea and who everyone says is only related to Charles by accent, and who will definitely end up winning the hair wars. Maybe that’s why William got back together with that nice Kate. She has a lot of it, under those hats she wears to owner’s paddocks…maybe they could share. You know, people like say we should have a Republic, but that would mean we’d have all these mugs with Royals and their failed marriages and biscuit tins with Queen Mother, at a hundred with all her own teeth, just sitting there unbought…it wouldn’t do – because there’s nothing like a tiara perched on top of rich blue blood to keeping you hoping for a letter with red seal inviting you to tea on the back lawn, or letters after your name and a chance to kneel where the Duchess of York hadn’t done it, or just the chance to curtsey.

-- Wendy Murray