I read this week that 15% of Brits are “very interested” in King Charles’s coronation. The rest of us are somewhere between “fairly interested” (29%) to “don’t give a flying fuck” (28%). Add those who “barely give a flying fuck” (24%) and there’s a majority who inhabit a land where the coronation barely matters. I am in the 28%, which certainly flies in the face of the geriatric demographic to which I belong.
As ever, the country breaks down into two camps. Old people love the royals, in the same way they loved Brexit and young people think the opposite. But that won’t be reflected in the media coverage on 6th May.
15% of the population is still a very large number, something like 10 million people so I imagine will pack the public places and party like it’s 1899. On The Big Day, Huw Edwards will lead the fawning BBC coverage, which will feature the ghastly Nicholas Witchell and scores of reporters up and down the land talking to the 15%, pretending that that 15% is all of us. Which it isn’t.
At the best of times, I am no royalist but in common with many of my type I rather liked the late Queen Elizabeth. She never had a job as such but as a figurehead she nailed it. We saw her as a force for unity, providing stability in an unstable world. Even I bought into that. Now that she has shuffled off her mortal coil, any respect I had for the head royal has all but disappeared.
I didn’t watch the Queen’s funeral on TV last year, but then most of us didn’t. Out of a population of around 68 million, some 29 million watched it. At the time, I felt as if I was in a tiny minority but it turns out that for once I was in a majority, even though it didn’t feel like it.
From what I can tell, for once sporting events aren’t being cancelled so clearly this is a somewhat minor affair. Given that Charles is already doing King’s stuff, I think most of us can’t see the point of an elaborate and expensive coronation. Couldn’t one of God’s senior vicars simply pop along to Buck House and declare the old boy king so we can just got on with it and donate all that cash to – ooh, let’s see – food banks?
It also turns out that Camilla Parker-Bowles will become Queen Camilla Parker-Bowles, something that Chuck has been banging on about for ages, possibly when she was the third person in Chuck and Di’s sham marriage. Hopefully, that won’t cost the taxpayer any more money than her soon to be abolished Queen’s consort non job, but then when it comes to the royals money is clearly no object.
So, when the streets of London are airbrushed and the rough sleepers moved out of sight, that 15% will be there, waving flags and singing God Save The King and the watching world will be thinking, “Look at those crazy Brits!” Well, not all of us, mate. I’ll be doing anything else. Anything else.
