69 for 1

by Alan Coren

  1. It was Richard III who got the Tudors started, by losing the Battle of Britain. The poor sod never stood a chance against the House of Lancaster once it had invented the four-engined bomber. Also, his Scandinavian allies let him down fatally by staying neutral so’s they could make ballbearings for both sides: his last words were: ‘A Norse! A Norse! My kingdom for a Norse!’

  2. The thing Henry VII was most worried about at the beginning of his reign was the Scots. To get James IV of Scotland on side, he sent his illegitimate daughter to marry him. She was a fit-looking woman, though barmy, called Margaret Hess.

  3. The person who created the Royal Navy was Henry VIII. One of his really top ideas was the submarine: he made loads of these which hunted in packs under the English Channel and sank all sorts of foreign boats and took jewels and spices and silks off them, but their best result was against the German Armada. Henry’s victory was to put Adolf Hitler off the idea of invading England for good. The last Tudor submarine to surface was the Mary Rose. My theory about why it didn’t come up for four hundred years is that nobody had remembered to tell the captain the war was over.

  4. The book Tudor Cornwall was written by A. L. Rowse. My teacher, Mr Foskett, who has just done a civil partnership with the Headmaster and is in a bit of a frisky mood, told our class that after A. L. Rowse had finished with Tudor Cornwall he went on to do Stuart Hampshire. Mr Foskett couldn’t stop laughing at this, but none of us could see the joke.

  5. In the reign of Henry VIII, the second most important man in England was Cardinal Wolseley. He not only invented the police-car, he also designed the engine for the Churchill tank. This was to play a major part in the Battle of the Bulge, so called because Henry VIII, who had originally planned to lead the English armoured brigade into battle, made the mistake of having lunch first, and was unable to squeeze himself through the hatch.

  6. They are the six wives of Henry VIII. After the fall of London, he took them all up on the roof of his Hampton Court bunker and shot them, to stop the Russians giving them a seeing-to.

  7. The Dam Busters raid was led by Wing-Commander Sir Francis Drake, who got the idea for a bouncing bomb during a game of bowls at Plymouth Argyle. The bombs were built by Wallis Simpson, aided by Grommet, but one went off accidently before the raid and killed Drake’s dog. I know the dog’s name, and would like to get an extra mark for writing it down, but I am not allowed. Can I get an extra mark for saying that Sir David Frost is remaking the film of the raid? I do not know much about the new script, except that when the Lancasters arrive over the Ruhr, Drake chucks open his cockpit window and shouts at the Germans: ‘Hallo, good evening, and welcome!’

  8. The reasons for her remaining the Virgin Queen were that the only two blokes to get anywhere near were Essex and Raleigh. She turned the first one down because it was better to be called the Virgin Queen than the Essex Queen. She turned the second one down because, although he got rich after inventing the bicycle, he was stingy, and only ever gave her fags or chips, neither of which she could get the hang of. Chips made her cough.

  9. The reason the theatre flourished under Queen Elizabeth the First was because it always does when there is a war on. It keeps people’s spirits up. The top playwriter was William Shakespeare, the Earl of Bacon, and his theatre was called the Windmill, which never closed. Hamlet and Cleopatra was far and away the most popular play put on there, even though Cleopatra had to stand dead still after Hamlet tore all her clothes off. Its best song was ‘Whale Meat Again’, due to food rationing.

  When You And I Were Young, Maggie

  SIMON Cellan Jones, director of Channel 4’s The Queen’s Sister admitted to The Times that the film ‘plays fast and loose with the facts in search of some kind of real truth.’ As you would expect, I asked for a transcript of the commentary. Clock these highlights.

  On June 6, 1944, Princess Margaret was the first Girl Guide to wade ashore at Normandy. She did not, of course, wade herself; she cantered in on the shoulders of her Brownie-in-Waiting, Joan Collins, under withering cross-talk from the US 4th Division, to her right, and the 2nd British Army, to her left, who were concerned that HRH’s Phantom V, bogged down in the sand, was holding up the disembarkation of the Allied armour.

  The Princess, however, with what was to become her legendary knack with ordinary people, told a Canadian platoon that if they didn’t tow her car onto the road they would all be hanged for treason; so, despite heavy casualties, they did. Her chauffeur, Noel Coward, then drove her towards Caen – where he knew a wonderful little place for lunch – only to be cut off by a squadron of Tigers. Normally more than a match for the statelier Rolls-Royce, the tanks were on this occasion commanded by Oberleutnant ‘Binkie’ von Ginsberg, who had not only played polo for The Sandringham Tiddleypoms in 1934 but had also enjoyed a brief inter-chukka affair with Mrs Simpson after losing his way to the gents. A chivalrous Junker and coward, he instantly surrendered, for which action the Princess was awarded a Distinguished Service Badge, sewn to her uniform by the little French girl who was to grow into a lively soubrette with interestingly close links to the Royal Family.

  In 1955, heartbreak struck when Margaret decided not to marry war hero Mickey Rooney, not because he had been divorced six times, but because she feared that none of their children would be more than four feet tall. But romance returned to her life when, a few years later, she took up with Brian Armstrong-Jones, the fifth Beatle, only to end in tragedy when he was thrown into a swimming-pool, possibly by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for constitutional reasons.

  She then began a turbulent affair with her cousin Lawrence Llewellyn Bowes-Lyon, the playboy hill-farmer, to whom she gave huge sums of money in support of his makeover scheme to brew organic gin, which could be poured on Weetabix to create a wholesome yet stimulating breakfast. Sadly, the relationship broke up during one of many experimental tastings, when the couple fell out over whether breakfast should be served with a twist or an olive.

  Famously fascinated from infancy by both fancy dress and show business, in 1959 Princess Margaret secretly joined The Black and White Minstrel Show. Watched – though not spotted – by nearly 20 million viewers, she sang ‘Way Down Upon De Swanee Ribber’ so convincingly that it became the anthem of the Weybridge Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan.

  By now, her weekend house parties were the talk of both the beau monde and the gutter press – the latter, indeed, these being the days of hot-metal typesetting, once running out of asterisks to describe what HRH didn’t give for either of them. Her lovable temper, however, was cleverly brought under control on one famous occasion by none other than Lew Hoad. Commanded to join the Princess and her entourage at Bonkers, the Bermuda hideaway of celebrity society cook Mrs Cecil Beeton, the great Wimbledon champion was invited to play a singles match against his hostess. Hoad, serving blindfold with a ping-pong bat, won the first set 6-0 in under two minutes, whereupon his opponent, having given her Tom Collins an enthusiastic suck, stubbed her cigarette out in Hoad’s ear and summoned her protection officers.

  After they had had a quiet word with Lew, the match resumed and the Australian lost 6-4. This became known as the Princess Margaret set.

  There Was A Crooked Man

  UP betimes, dawn the colour of a herring’s belly, and out to the frosted car. To find a big glossy card beneath the windscreen wiper. Nothing odd about that, you say, every day there is a new BOGOF pizza cobbler, a new once-in-a-lifetime deal on double-glazed grannie-patios, a new ex-SAS Home Office registered 24/7 security platoon, a new crack squad of state-of-the-art cutting-edge drain-rod engineers, a new purveyor of fresh fish daily to the doorsteps of the discerning gentry, a new girl in town, the former Miss Gdansk, silicone-free, own soap, all major credit cards accepted, absolute discretion assured . . . but, this time, it was none of these.

  Nor any old pasteboard card, either, but a fine laminated plastic job. On which giant scarlet capitals hollered ‘STOP!’ Above this ran the explanatory line: ‘Vehicle Crime Pr
evention Notice’, and below it, the kicker: ‘There Are No Valuables Left In This Vehicle’. Underneath that, the azure logo of the Metropolitan Police and beside it the slogan: ‘Safe in the heart of London.’ I plucked it out, turned it over, and learned that: ‘You have been given this card to keep in your car, as vehicles in this area are being targeted by thieves. Please leave it on your dashboard when leaving the car unattended. Consider leaving your glove box open, so it can be seen to be empty.’

  So I stood there for a bit, doing just that. I further considered leaving the boot open, so targeting thieves could see I had not locked the stuff from the open glove box in the boot; leaving the doors open so they could see I had not shoved the stuff from the open glove box under the seats; and leaving the bonnet open, so they could see I had not hidden the stuff from the open glove box beneath the scuttle. You know jemmies.

  But what I most considered was not leaving the notice on my dashboard in the first place; for thieves, you may have heard, know a thing or two about dishonesty, and on being told ‘There Are No Valuables Left In This Vehicle’, tend to respond ‘Pull this one, sunshine.’ Especially as the first sentence is unsettlingly ambiguous: notwithstanding its having been toiled over by the top brains of Scotland Yard, it could equally mean: ‘There Were Once Valuables In This Vehicle But There Are None Left’, which strongly suggests that breaking into this car is a doddle. Give us that coat-hanger, Wayne.

  I do wish the top brains had come to me. If they had said, ‘We have a bit of a problem, Al, more cars than ever are being turned over, but the police can do nothing, they have got their hands full going round poking notices under windscreen wipers, got any ideas?’, I would have suggested that drivers be advised to leave a rucksack on the back seat with wires dangling from it, preferably attached to a clock, and a luggage-label reading: ‘Osama bin Laden, 13a, Pondicherry Crescent, Ealing.’ Either that or gum a luminous sign to the rear window announcing: ‘Turkish poultry on board.’

  As to their keynote slogan, what possessed the Met to come up with: ‘Safe in the heart of London’? For that is exactly what I have, and I see no reason to advertise the fact to villains who, having ransacked my car, seek to take the next step up the acquisition chain. And no, since you ask, I take no comfort from the probability that innovative Old Bill policy is, even as I type, putting together a second elegant plastic notice reading: ‘There Are No Valuables Left In This Safe’, and advising me to keep its door open.

  Still, needs must when the devil drives, and if what he is driving is my car up to my door, its boot considerately left open by me to make it easier for him to heave my safe into it, then I suppose the Met must do everything in its power to stop him, even if it means suspending all police leave in the never-ending battle to deploy plastic notices round the clock before rushing back to the nick to spend the rest of the day squinting at CCTV footage in the desperate hope of clocking someone doing 41 mph on Hammersmith Flyover at 3 a.m.

  It is incumbent on each and every one of us to be proactive in this great new crime initiative. Why not make your own deterrent placards? Before going out for a walk, hang round your neck: ‘Do Not Mug This Man, He Is Carrying No Cash, Credit Cards, Cellphone, Or Keys’. Fearful of copping a house-trashing in your absence? Try: ‘Do not piss on this garden, we are growing top-quality Colombian Gold, please call later.’ Missed the last bus? ‘Do Not Attempt To Rape This Woman, He Is A Cabinet Minister In Drag.’

  And mind how you go.

  Time Check

  IN all the 31 years, 8 months, 22 days, 13 hours and 27 minutes that I had been writing regularly for The Times, I had never been as gobsmacked by anything in it as I was at 8.12 a.m. on Monday, January 16, 2006, the minute up to which all those other minutes had led. In the interests of precision, I wish I could tell you how many seconds there were on the end of the minutes, but I can’t. That is because, when the minutes began, back in 1974, I did not have an Artex clock. None of us had. We did not know about the Artex clock until Monday morning, at 8.12, when we opened our copies of The Times.

  To page 8. Where, beneath two unforgivably sloppy recipes for, on the left, duck salad with tarragon from Thomasina Miers, and, on the right, roast chestnuts from Joanna Weinberg, there was an advertisement from Times Offers Direct which put both these women to professional shame. How Ms Miers will ever hold up her head again after telling her readers to marinate the duck for ‘a minimum of one hour, but preferably three to four’, or Ms Weinberg go out in public after telling hers, even more slaphappily, to roast the chestnuts until ‘one of them pops with a loud bang’, I cannot begin to imagine. The sooner each coughs up £19.95 for an Artex clock to bolt beside her hob, the likelier both are to stave off their leaving parties.

  For the Artex clock, according to the rubric which so unprecedentedly gobsmacked me, is ‘guaranteed to be accurate to less than a second in a million years.’ That is one hell of a guarantee. I know it to be an honest one, too, because it carries The Times imprimatur, which means that the most nit-picking lawyers in the world – they have a collection of my own nits which is second to none – have nodded it through. They are confident that if, in 1,000,2005 AD, an owner of an Artex clock bangs on the front door of The Times and demands his money back on the grounds that, after only 999,999 years, his clock is two seconds fast, he will not have a leg to stand on.

  If, that is, he has legs at all. He’s a queer cove, your Johnny Evolution, and anything might have happened to Homo sapiens by then. Either that, or global ennucleation will have ensured that the only creature left to survive will, by 1,000,2005, have developed into Cockroach sapiens, who will have a lot of legs and be able to carry several iffy Artex clocks while still having a couple of legs free to bang on the Times door with. Provided, of course, that it is still The Times and not The Daily Cockroach; in which event the management may well disclaim any obligation to honour the guarantee offered by their predecessor in 2006. Should you wish clarification on this point before ringing 0870 789 0716 to order your clock, I suggest you ring The Times’ lawyers. If, mind, unable to contain your excitement, you ordered it as soon as you saw Monday’s ad, I really don’t know what to suggest.

  Some of you may not care: you may hold the view that since the clock will by 1,000,2005 no longer be yours but the property of a cockroach to whom you have no genetic connection, that is an end of the matter. Others more optimistic, blindly confident that the human race will not, any day now, vaporize itself, may be mortified at the thought that its distant descendant – let us call it grandchild 786 – will discover that, having been handed down successfully through 30,000 generations, its Artex clock is now on the fritz. Worse yet, your descendant may discover this by a life-changing shock: it could turn up for the first day at its first job, dressed in its smart new outfit, clutching its smart new briefcase, only to hear: ‘What time do you call this? You should have been here two seconds ago,’ and find itself out on its ear.

  This could be even more disastrous: if the human race has not vaporized itself, by 1,000,2005 AD there will be, according to my slide-rule, over two trillion people on the planet. Jobs will therefore be extraordinarily scarce, and employers extraordinarily choosy (hence the punctuality discriminator), so that anyone luckless enough to lose his on the very first day might well have no option but to jump off Westminster Bridge and drown himself. Or rather, given the effect global warming will have had on the River Thames by then, break his neck.

  Did I hear you ask if the Artex is an alarm clock? Not half it isn’t.

  Now We Are Sex

  ADVISERS to the Department of Education have advocated compulsory sex instruction in primary schools. A bit late for that, surely?

  daer santa:

  this crismas I would like a set of wills, I do not want no ordnry peddle car tho, yu canot pull wiv sunnink ware berds can see your nees going up and down, yu look like a kid, i want wun of them they do with battries, prefbly a harf-skale frarri or lambergini or simlar, also the seets hav to g
o flat to make a bed, narmean, i do not have to drore pitchers, we are bofe men of the werld, red wuld be favrite, wiv wite hide, yores, darren

  dear satna:

  i have been best mates wiv david pirkins from 4 dores up sinse we was 9, munce and munce now, we get on rill wicked, i hav shown him mine and he hav shown me his, and i have just read on the bottem of the parot’s cage that it is now posble for 2 yung men to marry wich meens i wuld get harf-shares in his gameboy and ipod and singed rio ferdnand shert and 2-liter flaggen of sir clif richard fragranse, also if he tragicly fel under a bus i wuld get harf the premian bonns his gran giv him for his crisnin, so wot i wuld like for crismas is a sivil partnership stifficate, i have bin up the post offis for a naplication form and they tole me to pis off. its stil the same ole story, a fite for luv and glory, but i am sure yu hav these things in lapland, it is orl the rage there, i hav seen my dads swede videos, yores, boris

  deer Father Cristmas:

  i do not kno if yu are aqucwainted wiv Father Merphy, it is posible you were at Vatican Junior Infants together, but even if yu do not kno him persnly yu both sing from the same wossname and see i to i wen it cums to cherch stuf, so i wunder if yu culd hav a word with him becaus all i wont for cristmas is for him to stop poakin his fat nose in ware it is not wonted, he sez if he catches me one more time in the orgn loft with samanther thingy – i do not know her naim, tall fit girl, brests cummin up a treet and no braces to speek of – he wil blo the wissel on me and i wil not be aloud to be josef in the nativty play, i wil have to be a donky, mi mum wuld kil me, josef is ded eesy, mi mum just chuks a sheet over me and winds a towl round mi hed, but with donkys yu have to sow eers and a tale on, she is rubish at sowing, seesons greetings, adam