“The police presence is marvelously understated here,” he smoothed. “Sometimes it’s difficult to work out if it’s a Middleton—or a member of staff.”
Another one of the great things about this wedding is that it is happening so early. As a nation on a public holiday sets up the cafetiere and argues over the last Coco Pops variety pack, the King of Swaziland and Elton John are having to get into central London on a day with limited public transport options, then queue up for twenty minutes to get into Westminster Abbey.
Look—it is only 9:15 AM, and there is David Beckham, stuck in a celebrity-and-dignitaries traffic jam, and practicing his “staring into the distance looking noble” face while the crowd outside shouts, “Becks! Becks! Becks! Becks!”
Perhaps it is the sheer shock of the early hour, but Beckham’s eyebrows appear to be verging just ever so slightly towards “Ming the Merciless.” Next to him, his heavily pregnant wife, Victoria, stands in four-inch Louboutins, a ticking human time bomb. With the time currently 9:16 AM, and the service not due to end until 12:15, her pregnant bladder will be a matter of fretting concern to all the mothers watching on television.
“That poor cow still on that pew?” they will ask, as they themselves take advantage of their own, immediately-to-hand toilet facilities. “Let’s hope she doesn’t sneeze, or it is game over.”
Last night, before the wedding began, there were a couple of things you would have felt incredibly confident in betting on. 1) The recurrence of the phrases “That dress,” “Fairytale wedding,” “What Britain does best,” “The eyes of the world,” “Diana’s boys” and “Princess Beatrice, there, wearing a . . . thing.”
2) Most women in the country crying quite heavily at some point during the ceremony.
And, finally, the most certain of all, 3) The BBC providing the definitive coverage of the event: solemn, reverent, knowing, stately, informed, and wholly befitting a royal occasion.
In the event, however, the BBC’s coverage is solemn, reverent, knowing, stately and informed—and it doesn’t befit this royal occasion at all. While the BBC gives us a thorough behind-the-scenes tour of the Household Cavalry’s schedule today (“These boys have been shining their boots since 5 AM!”) and thoughtful talking-heads in the studio, who marvel over the architecture of Westminster Abbey, ITV1 gets right in there: forcing milliner Stephen Jones to comment on other milliner’s creations as they walk through the Abbey doors (“It’s very . . . pretty,” he offered, eventually, with a cat’s bum mouth), giving us the money shots of Earl Spencer turning up (“There he is with his new fiancée—there’s always a new one, isn’t there?”), and zooming in on Prince Harry’s girlfriend, Chelsy Davies, the minute she emerged from a car (“The wonderful thing about Kate is that she’s so natural,” Julie Etchingham mewed, as Chelsey’s cheerfully bright orange face moved up the aisle).
In what was perhaps the definitive editorial decision of the day, at 9:30 AM, ITV1 cut from a live interview with David Cameron, who was being rather shiny and pious (“I know the whole nation wishes those young people a very great deal of luck”) to show Tara Palmer-Tompkinson’s arrival at Westminster Abbey instead.
The only possible reason for this newsflash-like urgency—Cameron was literally mid-sentence—was to see if Palmer-Tomkinson had, as had been speculated in the press, got her “new nose,” following the recent collapse of her septum: thus making it abundantly clear that, for today at least, a minxy aristocrat’s nasal integrity out-ranked anything the Prime Minister could say or do.
ITV1 had grasped what the BBC hadn’t, or perhaps couldn’t: that the way this country views the Royal Family has changed, and for the better. The ridiculous, childlike deference we had when Charles and Diana married—an era where there was the assumption that Diana would be a virgin, outrage at the creation of a Spitting Image puppet of the Queen Mother, and my father told me, in all seriousness, that I should never criticize the Queen in public “because you might get a punch in the face” (I was seven)—has gone, and it is better for all of us that it has. Opinions on what the national reaction to the life and death of Diana “meant” are two-a-penny, but I can’t help but think that what we all learned, along the way, is that princes and princesses can be as lonely, hopeful, confused, unfaithful, devious, lost, simple, kindhearted, silly and breakable as the rest of us, and that demanding that they be anything other than fallible and human is apt to work out extremely badly for everyone involved.
The healthiest way William and Kate’s future “subjects” could deal with watching their wedding, then, was to approach it as they would attending the wedding of a friend: i.e.: turning up in all good faith, having a couple of drinks, then cheerfully spend the rest of whole day taking the mick out of the décor, food, music, location and fellow-guests. Watch this just as they would watch X Factor—cheering the “good guys,” slagging off the ridiculous or amusing elements on Twitter. And this, in the event, is just what ITV1 did.
By 10 AM, all the celebrities and dignitaries were assembled in the Abbey, and it was time to reflect on whose presence was sorely missed, due to the limited guest list. Personally, I yearned for Bill Clinton—old Big Dog. He was brilliant at the Olympic Bids—always in the background of a shot, mine-sweeping the room for poon and canapés. Tony Blair, similarly, would have been a good booking—or, failing him, Michael Sheen, who could have done the ceremony as Blair, then gone to the reception as either Brian Clough, or David Frost.
Guy Ritchie’s arrival, meanwhile, underlined how awesome it would have been if he and Madonna had kept it together, and she was now stalking around the Abbey like Cruella de Ville with abs, making Nick Clegg cry with terror. And who didn’t want George Michael there—a little bit stoned, having valet-parked his Jeep into a nearby tree? Thank goodness, then, that he could appear by proxy, via Twitter, while watching the ceremony from home—where, he informed us, he was wearing “Union Jack pants.”
10:10 AM and Huw Edwards on the BBC was getting very stressed about the day’s schedule. “Prince William has ten seconds to appear,” he said, making it all sound a bit like an episode of 24.
10:11, and—a minute behind schedule—William finally emerged in the bright red uniform of the Irish Guards. As pop critic Tim Jonze [@timjonze] puts it on Twitter, “He’s come dressed as Pete Doherty, circa 2003!”
Over CNN, horror instantly broke out amongst the American pundits with the advent of the minibuses, which were ferrying the wider royal family to the Abbey.
“These are airport shuttle buses!” one wailed—presumably laboring under the belief that the only way royalty and the aristocracy can be transported around is in a gigantic hollowed-out pumpkin, pulled by unicorns. What the American commentators failed to understand is that one of the things that Britain does best is putting loads of people on a bus. Look at Summer Holiday. Away-matches. Pakistani weddings in Wolverhampton. With this bus thing, we were playing to our strengths.
Martin Kemp [@realmartinkemp] from Spandau Ballet didn’t think so, though: “Mini buses? Gimme a break,” he snorted on Twitter. “Spandau or Duran wouldn’t get in one of those. I bet Elton won’t be going to the part in one. Off with the head of who organized that.”
On the BBC, Kate Middleton had finally emerged from the Goring in a whiteout of flashbulbs. Even though we could not really see her, womankind had noticed one thing and was punching the air: the dress was sleeved! Yes! Finally the reign of evil sleevelessness is OVER! GOD BLESS YOU MIDDLETON! FASHION WILL NOW ALLOWS US TO HIDE OUR UPPER ARMS AGAIN, AS GOD INTENDED. Were the BBC to have a Body Dysmorphia-O-Meter, it would have registered an instant 40 percent drop across the nation. Our future Queen’s biggest legacy had begun.
Sleeves aside, these first shots of Middleton in the car were not ideal. The framing of the telephoto lens was such that both her head, and her lower-torso, were cut off from view, and all we could see was Ms. Middleton’s décolletage.
“It’s a limited view, but a delightful view,” Huw Edwards intoned, solemnly, as if he were now the BBC’s Official State Perver. As the bride’s father, Michael Middleton fussed around, placing the dress and train into the car, Edwards continued, “He is making sure everything is unsoiled, and undamaged”—an unfortunate narrative accompaniment to a man on his knees, half-buried under his daughter’s dress, on the morning of her wedding.
11:05 AM, and the country’s patriotism was peaking. This wedding looked brilliant. China must be so jealous. In your FACE, France. No one could do this better. America might have a funnier leader—Obama’s takedown of Donald Trump involved clips from The Lion King and adroit political sideswipes; David Cameron does an impression of Michael Winner in a car insurance ad—but when it comes to doing the best-ever gigantic ceremony full of princesses, and people wearing uniforms, this wins. It’s even better than the last scene in Star Wars.
William and a bedheaded Harry were joshing around at the altar like Luke and Han. The chief bridesmaid—Pippa Middleton—had a smokin’ ass. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s eyebrows were voluminous enough for him to be Chewie, and David Cameron and Nick Clegg could be C3PO and R2D2, if they wanted. This was amazing.
As if to confirm everyone’s thoughts, Wayne Rooney [@WayneRooney] tweeted, “Congrats to prince William and Kate. Wow what a turnout.” Rooney could appreciate the box office here as much as the next man.
As William pushed the ring onto Kate’s finger, accompanied by an odd, squeaky sound—I think it was his shoes—and the couple tried not to giggle, one thing became pleasingly clear: this wasn’t that much-touted thing, “a fairytale wedding,” at all, thank God. It was just . . . human.
Because it’s not just the public who have changed their view of the royals since the last wedding of an heir—the Royal Family itself has changed, too. Charles and Diana’s wedding felt like something arranged by the elders and their advisers, into which Charles and Diana were parachuted, as the token meat in a vast machine. On that day, Diana—in her too-big dress—and Charles—with his heart somewhere else—looked like they were being eaten alive by St. Paul’s Cathedral. In some ways, it’s like they never came back out of there.
This wedding, however, feels like it’s been imagined by a much younger and more confident generation: these glossy-haired girls and flush-cheeked, slightly awkward boys; this confederacy of tight-knit brothers and sisters and cousins. There is a sense of freedom, simplicity, camaraderie and fun here that one imagines Prince Charles watching from the pews in a slightly bittersweet way. These young royals seem to have a much better handle on being royal than their parents ever did.
Who would not enjoy this day?
Unexpectedly, the answer was: “Stephen Fry.” Halfway through the ceremony—around the time of that hymn that sounded like the song the teapot sings on Beauty and the Beast—Fry [@stephenfry] incongruously tweets: “Ding’s let Trump in. This twelfth frame is beginning to look huge. Nerve-wracking times.”
At first, everyone presumed it was a joke—but when Fry followed it up with, “Mid-session interval and they go in 7-5 in Judd Trump’s favor. No one yet pulling out in front, both these semis could go to the wire . . .” it became clear: Stephen Fry—friend of Prince Charles—really was tweeting the snooker during a Royal Wedding.
Someone needed to do something about this—and that someone was 1980s magician Paul Daniels: “WHO CARES?” Daniels [@ThePaulDaniels] asked Fry, as Twitter held its breath. Was Daniels about to take Jeeves into the Bunco Booth?
Daniels had been very passionate about this Royal Wedding: he had already castigated all the “snidey shits for coming out of the woodwork” who had dared criticize the day, definitively stated “WOW. That is what a Princess SHOULD look like” at Kate Middleton’s arrival, and informed us that his wife, Debbie McGee, was “sobbing” from 10 AM onwards. And in his Musketeer-like defense of the Royals, Daniels found an unlikely ally: legendary 1980s puppet Roland Rat.
“I can’t believe this English guy is so cynical!” Rat [@rolandrat] tweeted Daniels; presumably while wearing shades and a pink blouson bomber jacket.
“Off with his head!” Daniels agrees. The world’s most unlikely Cavalier online militia had started to form.
Indeed, sorry to relate, in the interregnum between the ceremony and the kiss on the balcony, the mood had started to sour right across Twitter. A slightly boozy barroom belligerence had taken hold. One sensed that, across the country, there were a series of street parties at which celebrities were grudging participants—having been forced to “get out of the house and stop being such a miserable git” by non-famous spouses; only to spend the rest of the afternoon at a half-empty trestle-table, grimly downing multi-pack can after multi-pack can of Foster’s and tweeting their distress to the world as their neighbors began a conga.
Pulp front-man—and recently divorced—Jarvis Cocker [@reallyjcocker] tweeted, rather dolorously, “10% of marriages end in divorce. Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.”
George Michael [@GeorgeMichael] seemed a bit . . . hazy: “The greatest tragedy was Alexander McQueen not being around to make a fabulous creation for Kate,” he tweeted—only to have to hastily clarify, minutes later, and presumably after some fairly irate replies, “Of course Diana’s absence is the greatest tragedy—but it really goes without saying.”
Things, however, had clearly degenerated most rapidly in the day of philosophical essayist Alain de Botton [@alaindebotton]. Having remained silent on Twitter all day, at 4 PM, de Botton suddenly weighed in with, “Women tend to miss the distinction between women who are beautiful, and women one would want to sleep with.”
Ten seconds later, the follow-up tweet clarified what was on de Botton’s mind: “Kate vs. Pippa.”
As the world got its head around de Botton choosing to issue his Middleton Family Shag Order list on the day of the Royal Wedding, Jade Goody’s widower, Jack Tweed [@JackTweed], finally issued his statement on this global event: “Not botherd about this wedding in the slightest everyone tweeting like they care is lying!!!”
He was wrong, of course—just like he was wrong that time he attacked that sixteen-year-old boy with a golf-club, and got sentenced to eighteen months in jail. People had cared a great deal. They cared about the idea of an event as big as the Olympics, or the inauguration of a President—and also about love, rather than sport or power. They cared about this rather serious young couple making their vows, in the way we care about all young people making vows. And they cared about the rather slash-fiction-ish idea of Pippa Middleton and Prince Harry getting it on. By 1:30 PM, the nation was roaring “Come on! KISS! KISS! You KNOW YOU WANT TO” at Pippa and Harry on the balcony as if this were Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but with a much shorter cast list. And no beards.
As the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge drove off in their Aston Martin to the reception—where they apparently danced to “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, and Prince Harry began his best man’s speech with “Pippa—call me,” before stage-diving off a windowsill into the crowd—you were given pause to reflect that—audience of two billion aside—they had given themselves just the wedding that they wanted.
And they had given us the wedding we wanted, too: heartfelt, worthy of a global audience, with David Beckham in it, and over early enough for everyone to get to the pub by 2 PM.
One of the reasons I’m too busy to get pregnant by a panda is because I spent the day with Paul McCartney. I SPENT THE DAY WITH PAUL MCCARTNEY!
MY DAY WITH PAUL MCCARTNEY. FROM THE BEATLES.
I didn’t know I was going to start crying until I started crying.
We’re standing side of stage of the Mediolanum Forum in Milan. Outside, a fog as thick as snow has reduced visibility to fifteen feet. The hardcore McCartney fans—here, despite the earliness of the afternoon—stand in long queues at each of the Medioforum’s t
wenty-five gates. The fog merges them into single, huge, lumpen entities.
Approaching the arena in a taxi, the Mediolanum Forum looks like it’s under siege by a series of dragons, or slow-moving brontosauri. They are singing “She Loves You,” damply, into the whiteout.
One particularly large, looming one is nearly fifty feet long. We drive past it, on our way to the backstage entrance.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” the Loch Ness Monster sings, mournfully, as it recedes in our rear-view mirror. “Yeah yeah yeah.”
Inside the Medioforum, and the whole building is also doing what the queues outside were doing: waiting. Waiting for Paul McCartney to arrive. He was expected at 4:30 PM, but it is now 6:30 PM—radios crackle with updates as to his location. His name is never really mentioned: it is just “He.” Like when the animals talk of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “He’s going to be another half-hour.” “He’s doing a radio interview.” “He is on the move, towards Cair Paravel.”
It is understood McCartney is the subject of all conversations. He is the purpose of everyone’s presence here.
To while away the time while we wait for Him, John Hammel—McCartney’s guitar tech for the last thirty-six years—takes me side of stage, to show me McCartney’s guitars. Racked up at eye level, in a line, it feels less like looking at some musical instruments, and more like being introduced to dignitaries, or royalty. They have a quiet presence. They have life stories better than most human beings.
“This is the ‘Yesterday’ guitar,” John says, taking a slightly battered-looking acoustic off the rack. There’s some scratching, and chips, by the fingerboard. “This is the one Paul played ‘Yesterday’ for the first time on, on The Ed Sullivan show.”
There’s a Wings sticker on it, I note. “Yeah. Been there since 1973.”
It’s a remarkably pristine sticker for one that’s been there since 1973. McCartney is clearly no nervous picker.
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