Happily behind a paywall on the howling mad Daily Telegraph website sits a comical article by Michael Ellis (nor me) who argues – and I am not making this up – that we, presumably we meaning the government, should be naming an airport after Camilla Parker-Bowles, or Queen Camilla as the cap-doffing columnist calls her. “Her positive impact on Britain deserves recognition,” he gushes. What positive impact is that, then?
We have this ridiculous obsession already of naming things after royals for no obvious reason other than they are royals. Ships, aeroplanes, trains, road bridges, whole underground and train lines across London are all named after the royals in one way or another and now Mr Ellis wants an airport to be named after her because as far as I can tell her sole contribution to the nation is to have married King Brian. Most royals, it has to be said, spend their time being rushed around from place-to-place, shaking hands with people and waving and, of course, being ‘patrons’ at various charities. It is not as if they are on the frontline day after day, out on the streets helping homeless people, for example, or packing food parcels for the hungry. I struggle to call it work at all.
Obviously, there are precedents on the subject of airport naming. Belfast is named after the legendary footballer George Best, Liverpool after Beatle John Lennon and Doncaster/Sheffield after … er … Robin Hood. Naming airports after Northern Ireland’s, and arguably the UK’s, greatest footballer and the greatest songwriter of all time, along with his mate Paul McCartney, makes sense as, I suppose, in a strange way Robin Hood makes sense, but Camilla Parker-Bowles?
If we’re going down this road, then maybe all airports could go down the road of being named after famous people. You can find enough of them all over the world, so here are a few suggestions.
I always refer to Bristol Airport as Adge Cutler International, named after the great west country folk singer who made his name with the Wurzels. And instead of Leeds/Bradford, how about Peter Sutcliffe International? We could rename Glasgow as Jimmy Krankie Airport and Birmingham? Ozzy Osborne International or, my own favourite, Benny Hawkins International, after the famous Crossroads motel character. I appreciate that none of these are likely to be chosen, especially not my suggestion for Leeds/Bradford which I appreciate is in rather bad taste and a choice I made to illustrate just how daft it would be to refer to a British Airport after King Brian’s wife. As with the Prince of Wales Bridge in these parts, which everyone still calls the Second Severn Crossing, no one would call an airport, say, Camilla Parker-Bowles International airport.
Personally, I wouldn’t name any transport hubs, railway lines of pretty well anywhere else after the royals. The Jubilee and Elizabeth Lines just sound stupid, whereas at least some of the others make sense, like the Circle, Central and Northern Lines. By all means, name the airports after famous local folk, which is why Adge ‘Drink up thy Zider’ Cutler would work so well. If not, just leave things as they are. The nation’s obsession with royalty is mad enough without naming airports after them. Not for the first time, the Telegraph is mad.
