Royal Rage

Somewhere in the depths of my Facebook page there is an embarrassing photograph doing the rounds. In fact there are several.

I can't say I'm all that proud of the one in which I am wearing a black curly wig, with someone's finger (I think it's actually my boss' but I can't be sure) pressing a false moustache above my top lip. Then there's the one in which my face is far too close up to the camera and I'm looking straight down the lens in the manner of Verne Troyer trying to scare some small children. Quite honestly I look demented.

That's possibly because I am. But anyway I'm not as disgusted by either of these as I am by the one of me sat freezing with my old school friends, frowning fiercely as Princess Anne walks by. She's barely regarding the poor disabled children, and the scowl on my face shows that actually I'd rather be anywhere else in the world than right there, right then at that moment.

I don't know if this brief and underwhelming experience of Royalty has any part to play here, but the point of all this is that I'm by turns confused and frankly apalled at the behaviour of Great Britain today, the day that Prince William finally got hitched to Kate 'who gives a fuck?' Middleton. Our great country came to an absolute standstill as a reported 2 billion people worldwide tuned in to see this alleged 'historical event'.

It's not that I'd rather be working but, I'D RATHER BE FECKING WORKING!!!! My mother told me that nobody is any better than me (nor any worse) yet here we are as a nation doffing our collective cap to some buck-toothed slap-head and his bit of posh totty. It actually beggers belief that we defer to these unelected toffs who have zero talent, and have earned precisely NONE of the riches and priveleges which routinely fall into their laps on a daily basis. If we're going to have Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses (and we wouldn't if I had any say in it), let them be people who have got where they are by talent and hard work.

And it's not just that we have to put up with this bullshit on the day either. The build-up has been an experience similar to the one I had when I had an absess drained from my mouth when I was around seven;

"But don't you want to see how beautiful she looks in her dress?" someone seriously asked me the other day. No, I friggity frigging don't. She's not my Princess. Ok, so she's half way attractive, but so were at least five of the women I saw hanging round Bar 44 in town last Sunday night. Will I get a day off work for their weddings if I promise to put up bunting and generally lick their arses?

No.

"Oh but William is so handsome, isn't he?" I've heard.

No. He isn't. As discussed he is a buck-toothed slap-head, the son of an adulterer (a crime for which I would be publicly flogged and hung on the corner of Dorothy Street) and an all around useless git. This boy is no Johnny Depp or David Beckham. For handsome, read rich, prestigious and powerful. Women seem to get those things muddled up somehow. Wasn't it Peter Crouch who, when asked what he would be if he were not a footballer, replied 'a virgin'? I think that makes the point beautifully.

Other arguements I have heard as to why I should have been glued to my television today drinking Pimms are equally knuckle-headed. Someone argued with me earlier in the week that we should celebrate the Royal Family because they are a part of our history and tradition.

So is slavery.

Not everything that is traditional is a good thing. There is such thing as change for the better. The Royal Family have a history of bloody violence and serial philandering. That we should look upon them as somehow the very definition of our Englishness strikes me as bordering on the deeply tragic. I'm all for celebrating our Englishness. Political correctness has gone berserk in it's attempts to stop us from doing so, but don't let our nationalism manifest itself like this. We're better than that, aren't we?

I am. My mum said. Despite some photographic evidence to the contrary.