The Prince Charles Letters
Page 8
‘Blobbily’ yours!
HRH The Prince of Wales
Spike Milligan
c/o The British Broadcasting Corporation
Wood Lane
London
England
18 August 1994
Dear Mr Milligan
You can keep your Monty Pythons, your Jim Davidsons, your Harry Enfields and Reg Varneys – much as I remain uncrowned, so too do you – the uncrowned King of Comedy! Your remarks at the microphone show you still have the golden touch when it comes to the funny bone. It wasn’t until I saw your film, Down Among The X Men, that it occurred to me how much the word ‘guerilla’ sounds like ‘gorilla’. Your comedy enlightens, as well as amuses.
I think it’s a crying shame that you are not a permanent fixture nowadays in the light entertainment schedules, although of course in regard to this, it is vitally important that we keep the feelings of both the Irish and Pakistani communities in mind.
At an awards ceremony, you called me a ‘grovelling little bastard’. I must confess, when I first got word of this, the blood drained to my boots and I practically swallowed my Adam’s apple. Rather stunned I was. Slowly, however, and with careful explanation from a trusted member of staff, I came to realise the remark was meant in a spirit of amusement and I have now taken it on board. In fact, it has become rather a joke with my staff. I say things to them like, ‘All right, you grovelling little bastards! I need my septic tank draining promptly,’ or, ‘See you, grovelling bastard, my shoelaces won’t do themselves up, you know!’ It’s been several days and they haven’t tired of it yet. We need humour of your sort in order that we don’t get above ourselves.
Grovellingly yours!
HRH The Prince of Wales
Billy Connolly
Sydney
Australia
13 January 1995
Dear Billy
Jolly good to have you over the other weekend, ‘laddie’! I have a feeling we are destined to become terrific ‘pals’. It may well be that some will revile you as a ‘toady’, particularly those of your countrymen of a Jacobin bent, for consorting with the likes of oneself. Ignore them – they are probably jealous! More than likely, they wish it was they, and not you, who had the privilege of being present at the slideshow presentation of my visit to the National Fruit Board.
Incidentally, I appreciate you were a little tired and had to retire early, two hours into the presentation, but you see, that isn’t actually done in one’s presence. Has anyone had a word with you? They probably will in due course.
Your dear chum
HRH The Prince of Wales
Rory Bremner
c/o Channel 4
Charlotte Street
London
England
17 July 1996
Dear Mr Bremner
I hope you don’t think I’m ‘taking’ a liberty but as one with a ‘Footlights’ pedigree, I wonder if I might submit for inclusion on your show a sketch written by oneself and rather ‘taking the rise’ out of oneself? It goes as follows:
(SCENE: The pantry, Buckingham Palace, in the small hours. It’s late at night and PRINCE CHARLES, in a dressing gown, sneaks quietly in and makes straight for the bread bins, opening each in turn. As he does so, HM THE QUEEN, also in a dressing gown, appears at the pantry door.)
QUEEN: What the devil is one doing?
CHARLES: I’m looking for a roll.
(Laughter)
The role/roll pun will work better aurally than on paper, I’m confident. It’s intended more as a ‘rib-tickler’ – so much satire is designed to wound nowadays.
Yours, in comedy
HRH The Prince of Wales
Rory Bremner
c/o Channel 4
Charlotte Street
London
England
30 July 1996
Dear Mr Bremner
I’m sure by now you’ve received, and had a wry chuckle at the sketch I submitted to you the other day. However, I must urge you to stick precisely to the wording and not be tempted to ‘improvise’ around it. I say this because I decided, by way of a parlour game at our most recent family gathering, to give the sketch a try-out with various members of my family playing the roles. My mother, HM The Queen, played herself but refused to say ‘one’, instead insisting on ‘you’ and claiming it was less ‘hackneyed’.
Edward played myself, first of all. For a theatre man, my brother was, I’m afraid, hopeless. Not only did he linger a beat coming into the punchline but he delivered it as follows: ‘I’m looking for a bread roll.’ Needless to say, he missed the sense of the line and I was the recipient of some jolly unjust blank looks.
My sister Anne then took a turn at playing the Queen. This time I played myself without a hitch. However, the lines went as follows:
ANNE (AS QUEEN): What the devil are you doing?
CHARLES (AS CHARLES): What the devil is ONE doing? I’m looking for a roll!
ANNE (AS QUEEN): Well, that’s the only roll you’ll be given around here while I live and breathe.
At which point everyone roared, but you see Anne had missed the point. Mine was the punchline, not that thing she made up. She’d stolen my thunder and in so doing torpedoed the entire sketch.
Finally, I decided to play HM The Queen, if only to get her line right. This time, Prince Philip (my father) played oneself:
CHARLES (AS QUEEN): What the devil is one doing?
PHILIP (AS CHARLES): Well, there are three people in my marriage and it’s a bit overcrowded, so I thought I’d sleep down here.
Which brought the bally house down, but once again was completely straying from the point of the sketch. Whereupon I abandoned the entire exercise and stormed out. My family have absolutely no sense of comedy.
Yours, in disgust
HRH The Prince of Wales
Michael Caine
Hollywood
California
USA
19 April 2001
Dear Mr Caine
Like me, you’re a busy man so I won’t detain you long. At Palace Christmas parties, it’s my custom to entertain family members with a selection of ‘impersonations’. They have to guess who I’m doing. Between you and me, they’re not always very good at doing so.
Last year, I did you … and drew a complete blank. So, I’m going to have another go this year. Just to clarify, is it:
‘MOI name is MICHAEL CINE’
‘My NIME is MOICHAEL CAINE’
or
‘MOI NIME is MOICHEL CINE’?
Really, you’d think mentioning your name in the impersonation would have been all the help they needed, but still they professed to be quite stumped, even Anne. I got very exasperated, which made them all titter … which only steamed me up all the more. Why would they be so obtuse?
Yours – and ‘not a lot of people know that!’
HRH The Prince of Wales
William Roache
aka Ken Barlow
c/o Granada Studios
Manchester
England
18 April 2005
Dear Mr Roache
I’m not one of those people who thinks soap opera characters are real-live people – they say I’m out of touch but credit me with some marbles! That said, with the greatest respect, Ken Barlow is the person I know and the one I’m really interested in. You’ll understand.
So, if you’ll indulge me, I’ll address myself to Ken. You, Ken, strike me as the most reasonable man on television. We were married around the same time, we have suffered ups and downs, and often feel like we have never quite found our true role. Both of us have wrestled with our consciences, like a couple of ‘Mick McManuses’.
I was wondering, Ken, if you could come up to Highgrove and have a broad, free-ranging discussion about what’s to be done about things. If I could turn back to you, Mr Roache, and explain what I mean by this. I’d like you to come up to Highgrove, where you would of course be put up, but f
or you to sit down and converse with me in the character of Ken. It is his views, his counsel I seek. Naturally, you may pitch in as well – just say, ‘And if, Sir, I could just put in a word as William’ – but in the main, Ken’s the man I want to hear from.
Earnestly, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Bill Oddie
c/o Autumnwatch
The British Broadcasting Corporation
London
England
7 April 2006
Dear Mr Oddie
Well, you’ve come a long way from the days of The Goodies! I remember guffawing like a drain at your antics back in the 1970s, especially the ‘Ecky Thump’ episode, to the point where my sister, HRH The Princess Anne, was quite short with me. ‘If one of my horses was whinnying like that, I’d assume it was in agony and have the animal destroyed!’ she snorted.
As a fellow humorist, I thought I’d share with you quite an amusing story. In honour of your work at Autumnwatch, I suggested to Camilla that one of the big Nature agencies lobby for some part of the landscape to be renamed in your honour. ‘Sort of, perhaps, Bill Oddie Hill, for example’ to which Camilla replied, ‘Sounds a bit like “Bloody hell!” doesn’t it?’ On reflection, I had to agree and laughed as if watching a giant kitten scale the Post Office Tower! Spoken quickly, the results are unfortunate: Bill Oddie. So, anyway, I’m afraid a hill is out of the question. Nature and profanity are no bedfellows.
Yours &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Gordon Ramsay
c/o Channel 4 (Cookery Department)
Charlotte Street
London
England
4 June 2007
Dear Mr Ramsay
It’s plain from your television series that you wield a fine skillet, a talent I’ve always admired. I’ve worn the white hat myself on occasion, though I’ve always thought I could do with a bit of mentoring in order to bring myself up to scratch.
Which is where you come in. Do you suppose you could spare the time to come up to Highgrove and we could work together amid the pots and pans to really put me through my culinary paces? It would be lovely to surprise Camilla with a Courgette Gratin, just the right side of ‘gooey’.
One condition, however. I know you’ve got a bit of a short fuse so I warn you, I don’t respond well to that sort of thing: I get flustered and muddled up. Memories of my father, HRH The Prince Philip, come flooding back – ‘NOT LIKE THAT, BOY – GIVE IT HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU FOR THE TENTH TIME! – GOOD GOD, DUMBO! WITH EARS LIKE THAT YOU’D THINK YOU’D BE ABLE TO TAKE IN THE SIMPLEST INSTRUCTIONS – NOW TRY IT AGAIN. NO, NO, NO! YOU’VE MADE A PIG’S RUMP OF THE WHOLE THING! YOU’RE AN IMBECILE, BOY – WHAT ARE YOU? LOUDER, DON’T SNIVEL! THAT’S RIGHT, AN IMBECILE! NOW GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!’
Yours &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Simon Cowell
c/o The X Factor
ITV
London
England
2 February 2008
Dear Mr Cowell
First, I must compliment you for I identify with you. To have persisted these many years with such a singularly unfashionable haircut shows (as some might say it does in me) a defiance and quality of mind rare among men. As to your show, The X Factor, I wonder, as one distinctively coiffured modern gentleman to another, if I could make a request?
You see, I have a footman – actually, I have two, one for both feet (a joke as you’ve doubtless realised), who fancies himself as something of a ‘crooner’ or ‘belter’. He does a rendition of a song entitled ‘Wonderwall’ by the group Oasis, which I can only describe as voluble. I shouldn’t like to see him suffer the agonies of audition by television set, might I therefore suggest you come up to Highgrove and give him the once-over?
While here, and this is very much an afterthought, I’d like your opinion on a little act of my own. I shan’t give the game away at this stage but suffice it to say, I doubt there’s another act in Europe who can capably perform ‘When Will I See You Again’ by The Three Degrees on a ‘pair’ of eighteenth-century basting spoons.
Yours, in keen anticipation
HRH The Prince of Wales
Jeremy Clarkson
c/o Top Gear
The British Broadcasting Corporation
London
England
12 May 2008
Dear Mr Clarkson
I should begin by saying that I don’t think we quite see eye to eye on this whole global warming business. You think it’s a lot of nonsense got up by the spinach sandal brigade, I say quite the contrary. And my sandals, I should have you know, are not made of spinach: they’re exclusively hand-stitched by a little man in the Andorran mountains, durable yet eco-sustainable. Bury them, and they decompose naturally in the soil, as indeed did mysteriously happen to three consecutive pairs during the years with my former wife.
Well, my point is this: under strict conditions, I should like to come on your television show, Top Gear. Not to be a figure of fun, you must understand – I know what tricks you blighters can play in the editing suite, which you’d be on your honour not to play on this occasion. I rather fancy that I could show your viewers a thing or two about the thrills and spills of eco-sustainable driving in a vehicle of my own devising, which I call the ‘Poundbury Pelter’.
Picture, if you will, a go-kart-like vehicle with balsa wood casing and ample room for one man of average-to-above-average girth. At the rear two recycled cycle wheels, at the front, a ball similar to the one on the front of a Dyson ball wheelbarrow. Beneath the seat a small battery engine, which can run for almost half a mile on a single bucketful of animal dung (even Mother’s corgis have contributed their bit, thanks to my faithful scoop and the faithful retainer who has the honour of being its bearer).
The engine is augmented by good old-fashioned pedal power. I fancy that I wouldn’t match the sort of times registered by some of your guests in conventional vehicles. Instead of, say, 1m 26s, we’d be looking at more in the order of ten minutes or so. But they’d be ten earth-saving minutes, hang it all, and I’d suggest, absorbing television viewing: we need to slow down the pace of modern life, I feel, not quicken it. Indeed, speaking of gears, I often wish life had a ‘reverse gear’. Though I wouldn’t care to reverse back to my school years, I’d slam down the brake on the Poundbury Pelter when I approached them (a trowel attached by elastic to some wiring, since you ask).
Talk directly to my people about it – they have my diary.
Yours, in moderation
HRH The Prince of Wales
Jeremy Clarkson
c/o Top Gear
The British Broadcasting Corporation
London
England
21 May 2008
Dear Mr Clarkson
I was really most appalled to hear a reference in connection to myself to the ‘Poundbury Pelter’ on last Sunday’s edition of your show. It is one discourtesy not to reply to a man’s correspondence, but an altogether bigger one to use its contents to bandy about for comedy purposes on the television set.
I must now withdraw my offer to appear on your show and close this correspondence. It is a shame – the environment will suffer as a result – but there is a principle at stake.
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Al Murray
Al Murray’s Happy Hour
c/o ITV Studios
London
England
5 May 2009
Dear Mr Murray
I caught your show on the commercial channel at the recommendation of my father, who described you as ‘the only fellow on the gogglebox with enough bloody backside to talk the truth’. I must say, I was deeply affected by your fealty to Queen and Country, and must congratulate you for persisting when all about you were laughing openly in your face.
I regret to say that I know that feeling. Some years ago, I proposed we establish a private bottle bank for my
grandmamma, HM The Queen Mother. I meant it earnestly but it was met with a round of guffaws from my family – my Father in particular, who roared, ‘Bloody good idea! Recycle her empties and in six months we’d have stitched up your hole in the bloody ozone layer and you’d have to find something else to do with yourself, boy!’
However, touching on the issues you have with the French: persevere. I understand. In 1962, I was forced to take High Tea with the then President de Gaulle on the Palace terrace. Haughty! There I sat, in an anguish of short trousers and strained silence. Great hairy knees, I thought, if this is the French you can bloomin’ well keep ’em. After about an hour he turned stiffly to me and said, ‘You ’ave do … homeweerrkk?’ And I replied, ‘Yes, m’sieur.’ Not much, I know, but vaguely cordiale. So do persist. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s worth it, but we must persist.
A votre (I think that’s right)
HRH The Prince of Wales