by David Stubbs
Yours, etc.
HRH The Prince of Wales
John Major
10 Downing Street
London
England
29 November 1990
Dear Mr Major
Well, congratulations, of course, on reaching Number 10, but I know you’ll forgive me when I say that until a few weeks ago I hadn’t the faintest idea who you were. I know the last time we did meet, you had one of those identity laminates clipped to your breast pocket, which was jolly helpful. I’d advise you, for the time being at least, to hang on to that laminate, particularly when at the Palace. My grandmother is not good with new faces – catching sight of you approaching down the corridor she’s likely to take you for an official from her bank and go scurrying off to her quarters to camp out until one of her gentlemen-in-waiting sounds the all-clear.
The best of luck – in your in-tray, you will find a number of initiatives and suggestions which I submitted to your predecessor, who sadly never found the time to give them her fullest attention. I trust your sense of priority is more attuned with the needs of our kingdom than hers.
Yours, in hope and faith
HRH The Prince of Wales
PS I did get your name right, didn’t I? I’m suddenly plagued by this inkling you’re called ‘Geoff’. Ah, well!
John Major
10 Downing Street
London
England
12 July 1996
Dear Mr Major
I must say, I was impressed by your ‘Cones hotline’ initiative – it’s the sort of lead we hope our politicians will take, although alas, all too often fail to do so. I assure you my staff are on constant ‘Cone Alert’ with a large jotter in my office available for them to write down any infractions spotted on their travels. So far, it would seem from glancing at its pages that there is nothing to report, which suggests the motorway people have already taken heed of your scheme.
I wonder if I could run by you an initiative of my own: a five-point plan to get Britain back on its feet, which, although ‘apolitical’ in nature could, with your support I hope, become official government policy, or at least form the general basis for policy. It runs as follows:
SOCKS: Pull them up!
PECKER: Keep it up!
IDEAS: Buck them up!
CHINS: Keep them up!
EARS: Prick them up!
If you read down the left-hand side, it forms the mnemonic ‘SPICE’, which seems to be a buzzword at the moment. I’m sure you’ll agree, as a man who wants to get things done himself, it’s a catch-all corrective against pessimism, despair, cynicism, spinal curvature of the soul, slacking and slouching. So, once your men in suits have put some flesh on these bones, shall we clear our respective diaries to make a joint announcement? I’ll raise another alert among my staff.
Yours, ‘on the hotline’
HRH The Prince of Wales
John Major
10 Downing Street
London
England
14 July 1996
Dear Mr Major
Pulling back in the Bentley towards the Palace, I spotted a cone! It was lying on the pavement, next to an abandoned shopping trolley. Possibly the result of student ‘high jinks’, but thought you should know all the same.
Yours, etc.
HRH The Prince of Wales
John Major
10 Downing Street
London
England
16 July 1996
Dear Mr Major
Has anything been done about that cone? I need something in writing for my records.
Yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London
England
3 May 1997
Dear Mr Blair
Well, I must congratulate you, of course. Labour in power, eh? That used to mean smelly pipes, beer and sandwiches; also trade union leaders shambling in and out of Number 10, representing members whose ‘jobs’, sadly, mostly involved filling the atmosphere with ghastly industrial effluvium.
You, I sense at a glance, are different: you remind me of myself as a younger man. A moderniser, impatient with the old dogmas, eyes blazing with ambition, tough on things, tough on the causes of things … I like that. I sense we can work together. I have not always felt able to make the same sort of connection with your predecessors but with you I feel confident enough to say that when you are eventually relieved of office, you could perhaps work with me as a senior advisor on my staff. Yes, I believe that’s how much we see eye to eye on things (and the causes of things).
Yours, millennially
HRH The Prince of Wales
Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London
England
11 March 2005
Dear Mr Blair
Concerning the Eurovision Song Contest, then. As you know, this is an important gala occasion, perhaps on a par with the annual Royal Variety Show, in which the best and brightest European songwriting talent ‘battle it out’ under the bright lights. My staff and I tune in every year – it’s their annual treat.
However, in recent years the United Kingdom has fallen behind. This does no good to our credibility as a trading partner. Hang it all, at this rate we’ll get fewer and fewer foreign orders, more and more jobs will be lost and there’ll be more and more ‘boys in the hoods’ on street corners.
I feel it’s my duty to take a lead and so I’ve taken it upon myself to pen some ‘lyrics’ to which music could be set with a view to entering the Contest. I’d like your honest opinion.
Paean to This Green Jewel of Mine
Merrie, Merrie Englande
Where stout yeomen and apple-cheeked wenches caper
round yon maypole
Where hope lies, like the turnip, in the soil
Where the farmhand, like the slug, is happy with his lot
Where the herbs that flourish in yon hedge cure all that ails thee
And where the church bells ring out their Song Of Pleasantness
Bing Bing-a-Bong, Bing Bing-a-Bong
Bing Bong-a-Bong, Bing Bing-a-Bong
Bing Bing-a-Bong, Bing Bing-a-Bong
Bing Bong-a-Bong, Bing Bing-a-Bong
(repeat several times)
The last bit I slipped in to ‘jazz it up’ a bit for the young ones. As for musical accompaniment, may I make a bold suggestion: that you yourself, as a guitarist of note, compose a melody? It would certainly be a demonstration of Government and Monarchy really working together for their subjects. Could you let me have your reply, with sheet music sample, within 48 hours?
Yours, in tune
HRH The Prince of Wales
Gordon Brown
10 Downing Street
London
England
28 June 2007
Dear Mr Brown
So, at last you have your moment in the sun. I, too, know what it is to be kept around waiting, waiting and waiting, despite one’s expectations as a young man and the sense that the person incumbent was holding on for as long as they could because they suspected the fellow champing at the bit to take over was some sort of dundering incompetent.
And with those comforting words, I wish you well in what will doubtless be a long and successful tenure in office.
Yours, in fellow stewardship
HRH The Prince of Wales
David Cameron
10 Downing Street
London
England
12 May 2010
Dear Mr Cameron
So, now that you and Clegg have thrashed things out, I can finally extend congratulations on your partial electoral success. It’s not to everyone’s liking in this so-called meritocratic age that an old Etonian has his hands on the keys to Downing Street but between you and me, better an Eton man than a Gordonstoun one (or certainly some of those who came to manhood via that particula
r institution, in which sadism among boys was practically part of the curriculum).
As you hover on the threshold of governmental responsibility I see in your fresh face and rosy cheeks the perhaps naive optimism of a young lad who fetched up for his first term at Gordonstoun. His name too was David. I forget his surname – I was later given to understand that he would, in time, have been groomed to fag for me. But this was never to be. I remember in the dining hall some of the fourth form boys were discussing putting on some sort of Christmas cabaret whereupon David – who had been sitting adjacent to them – interjected, trilling about how at his prep school he had ‘done a turn’, singing ‘Food, Glorious Food’ from the musical Oliver! This, to my mounting horror, he proceeded to demonstrate in a soprano that carried across the hall.
As a public schoolboy I need hardly remind you, Mr Cameron, that no one likes a chatty little swine, especially a new bug – but a singing one? Like a close escort of some hapless victim of Stalin’s purges summarily removed from the Star Chamber, the fourth formers took him out of the hall and into the boys lavatories where, by all accounts, they gave him such a fearful roughing-up that he was under the care of Matron for three days before his father did what I wish mine had done – which is to say, drove up to the school in his Rolls and whisked him away for good, leaving the housemaster with a piece of his mind into the bargain.
That was the Gordonstoun way and I trust it’s not the Eton way. I like what you say about compassionate Conservatism. I, too, dream of presiding over a kingdom in which one’s subjects do not suffer bullying, ear-tweaking, ragging or urination in lunchboxes. At a glance, I can see that had you gone to Gordonstoun, you would have been what we called a ‘roastee’, not a ‘roaster’.
Yours, in sympathy
HRH The Prince of Wales
David Cameron
10 Downing Street
London
England
12 May 2010
Dear Mr Cameron
It just came to me: Partington. That was his name, David Partington – no idea what became of him. Well, carry on, eh? Those essential public services won’t cut themselves!
Yours, etc.
HRH The Prince of Wales
David Cameron
10 Downing Street
London
England
13 October 2010
Dear Mr Cameron
Pootling through Central London in my official car, I was deeply conscious of how slow our progress was, which was the dickens of an annoyance as I was late for my appointment at the Federation For Corporate Concern’s annual conference. I was due to deliver a keynote speech entitled, ‘There You Are, My Man – The Importance of Giving a Little Back’.
As we sat in gridlock, I did, however, spot a remarkable sight – that of enterprising young men pulling around tourists in brightly painted rickshaws for a token fee. I felt like I’d been blessed with a vision of the future and I invite you, Mr Cameron, as a man of the future, to implement it. Suppose commuters formed a ‘rickshaw pool’ in which, say, one man pulled two of his colleagues to work, only for each of them to reciprocate over the coming days? The Cabinet could take a lead.
The next time I’m being driven through London it would be tremendous to have my chauffeur wind the window down, enabling me to see you cheerfully pulling Mr Clegg and Mr Osborne along to Parliament, with Mr Osborne returning the favour to you and Mr Clegg the next day, and Mr Clegg taking his turn the day after that. You could call yourselves ‘the jambusters’! Of course Mr Eric Pickles presents a problem but perhaps he could be declared exempt from the scheme on the grounds of circumference.
Practically, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
David Cameron
10 Downing Street
London
England
10 November 2010
Dear Mr Cameron
Time was, you know, Cameron, when a politician wasn’t a politician unless he had the sort of beard a small bird could nest in! Sadly, those days are past. You yourself, it seems, are the ‘new model’. During our conversations at close quarters I have been fascinated to study your face. It’s as if you are made of silicone. Have you ever shaved? Do you have some bizarre skin condition? In which case I apologise for bringing the subject up.
How long do you think it would take you to grow a beard? My wife reckons about twelve months but I’m inclined to think anything between two and three years. This is not flippancy – I wouldn’t take up your valuable time with this issue were I not genuinely intrigued.
Yours, in anticipation
HRH The Prince of Wales
Tony Blair
Houses Of Parliament
London
England
3 July 2011
Dear Mr Blair
I know you’re no longer an ‘MP’ but I suppose they’ll be glad to forward your mail after all that you did for parliament.
I must say, I’m astonished to read what your sidekick Campbell has to say in his diaries about my excessive and interfering letter writing. He wasn’t confusing me with either Andrew or Edward, was he? Off the top of my head, I’m hard pressed to remember any letters I wrote to you at all. Yes, there was China, and fox hunting, oh yes, and the whole GM foods question, I grant you, and the hereditary peers business I now recall, and, ah yes, Europe, nuclear power, the role of the loom in the so-called ‘service economy’, the one about yoghurt, one written in error intended for the ‘hoofer’ Lionel Blair, one in which I sent you some cuttings of limp parsley acquired from one of our ghastly supermarket chains asking what was to be done, several demanding why your deputy, portly fellow, name escapes me, senior moment, my apologies … ah yes, Prescott! – why Prescott hadn’t yet replied to my letters and requesting you to give him a ‘nudge’ and perhaps no more than a couple of hundred others. Other than that, none at all, to my knowledge.
What irks me is that you never brought it up with me yourself. In our meetings, you were rather apt to regard me in that boggle-eyed way of yours, with that rictus expression clamped to your chops as if you had smiled too much as a child and your face had set that way. I’m sorry, that isn’t a facial affliction, is it? I made a similar ‘gaffe’ once with Gordon Brown and his eyeball.
Wounded, yours
HRH The Prince Of Wales
PS – I resent this insinuation of your fellow Campbell that I am somehow out of touch and elitist. I should say that I would never, never ask anyone to do anything that I, myself, would not ask my manservant to do.
The Beat Musicians: Those Who Make Us Swivel to the Rhythm
The Beatles
Parlophone Records
London
England
13 April 1963
Dear Beatles
I don’t really like ‘pop’ music because even though it has a good rhythm, it seems a bit silly and repetitive, and just for girls who are into fashion. But The Beatles are something different. I don’t know what it is about you, but I find myself humming your songs and sometimes even snapping my fingers when I hear your tunes – they’re ‘catchy’, ‘man’!
I’ve decided I really don’t want to be a prince; I think I’d really rather be a Beatle. I wonder if any of you would care to do my job? I was thinking of you in particular, Ringo: you’re only the drummer, that’s the easiest instrument; I could manage that. And you get to sit down during the concert, which the others don’t! You could swap places with me, Ringo – you could do my job, I’m sure of it. I’m very grown-up and serious about this, intensely serious. Not like I was with Tommy Steele, this is serious. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask my mother and father if we can swap. Will you ask your mother and father too, Ringo? You’d be king one day – King Ringo the First. I want to meet girls.
Yours
(Soon to be ex?) HRH The Prince of Wales
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
<
br /> 13 April 1969
Dear Mr Lennon and Miss Ono
I hope you don’t consider this correspondence an intrusion, nor that you are required to get out of bed in order to fetch it, thus scuppering your whole ‘gimmick’. I expect you have people to do that sort of thing for you, anyway. Being idealists, I don’t suppose you believe in Princes and suchlike, but I trust you have nothing against Wales and so on that basis we can meet halfway.
This ‘Go to bed rather than make war’ idea of yours is jolly fine, I think in principle, but as a young man on the point of carrying out my family’s long tradition of military service, I don’t believe I can in my heart of hearts advocate loafing to that extent. Perhaps if you were to compromise – if you could adjust your message so that it was something like ‘Be sure to get a good, peaceful night’s sleep’ then I could cheerfully give it the Royal seal of endorsement. With the amount of rushing about in the modern world, ‘shut-eye’ is on the decline, I’m sure we might agree. Could we not work together on this?
Your humble servant
HRH The Prince of Wales