Fish, bananas, old pyjamas

A python lurks at Kensington Palace

I don’t know about you, but the tumultuous events surrounding the Princess of Wales of late have had me casting my thoughts to that ancient repository of wisdom and sagacity: Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

It’s hard to say precisely where it all started, but it seems, for the sake of relevance and brevity, to have started with those words, which initially appeared as a benign, innocuous brush-off, as one would give instructions to servants (tell them what to do but never descend to telling them why they’re doing it), and which now shine forth as ominous: abdominal surgery.

It is Monty Python’s court martial sketch that bounds to mind in most agile fashion. In it we see a military court chaired by Terry Jones, with Michael Palin as the prosecutor and Eric Idle as Sapper Walters, the accused. The charge is failure to conduct the war in a warlike fashion.

PROSECUTOR: Sir, we all know the facts of the case, that Sapper Walters, being in possession of expensive military equipment, to wit: one Lee Enfield 303 rifle and 72 rounds of ammunition, valued at £140.3s.6d, chose instead to use wet towels to take an enemy command post in the area of Basingstoke.

CHAIRMAN: Basingstoke? Basingstoke in Hampshire?

PROSECUTOR: Er, no, no, no, sir, no.

CHAIRMAN: Oh, I see, carry on.

PROSECUTOR: The result of this action was that the enemy received—

CHAIRMAN: Basingstoke, where?

PROSECUTOR: Basingstoke in Westphalia, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Oh, I see! Carry on.

PROSECUTOR: The result of Sapper Walters’s action was that the enemy received wet patches upon their trousers and, in some cases, small, red strawberry marks upon their thighs—

CHAIRMAN: I didn’t know there was a Basingstoke in Westphalia.

PROSECUTOR: It’s on the map, sir.

CHAIRMAN: What map?

PROSECUTOR: The map of Westphalia as used by the army, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Well, I’ve certainly never heard of Basingstoke in Westphalia.

PROSECUTOR (Wikipedia-like): It’s a municipal borough, sir, 27 miles north-northeast of Southampton, producing—

CHAIRMAN: Southampton in Westphalia?

PROSECUTOR: Yes, sir, (continuing) bricks, clothing, nearby the remains of Basing House, burned down by Thomas Appen in 1684—

CHAIRMAN: Who, who, who compiled this map?

PROSECUTOR: Cole Porter, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Cole Porter? Who wrote Kiss Me Kate?

PROSECUTOR: No, alas not, sir, this was the Cole Porter who wrote Anything Goes, sir. (Resuming speech) I shall seek to prove—

CHAIRMAN: It’s the same one! (Sings) “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking.”

PROSECUTOR: I beg your pardon?

CHAIRMAN (singing): “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now, heaven knows, anything goes!”

PROSECUTOR: No, this one’s ... er ... different, sir.

CHAIRMAN: How does it go?

PROSECUTOR: What, sir?!

CHAIRMAN: How does your Anything Goes go?

ACCUSED: Can I go home now?

CHAIRMAN (to accused): Shut up! (To prosecutor) Come on!

PROSECUTOR: Sir, really, I think this is—

CHAIRMAN: Come on! How does your Anything Goes go?

PROSECUTOR (singing an entirely different tune): “AnyTHING goes in, anyTHING goes out: fish, bananas, old pyjamas, mutton, beef and trout. AnyTHING goes in—”

CHAIRMAN: No, that’s not it. Carry on.

PROSECUTOR: With respect, I will seek to prove that the man before you in the dock, in possession of the following: one pair of army boots valued £3.7s.6d, one pair of serge trousers valued £2.3s.6d, one pair of gaiters valued £68.10s—

CHAIRMAN: Sixty-eight pounds ten shillings for a pair of gaiters?

PROSECUTOR: They were special gaiters, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Special gaiters?

PROSECUTOR: Yes, sir. They were made in France, sir. (Resuming speech) One beret costing 14 shillings—

CHAIRMAN: What was special about them?

PROSECUTOR: They … they were made of a special fabric sir, the buckles were made of empire silver instead of brass. (Resuming speech) The total value of the uniform was—

CHAIRMAN: Why was the accused wearing special gaiters?

PROSECUTOR: They were a presentation pair, from the regiment. (Resuming speech) The total value of the uniform therefore—

CHAIRMAN: Why did they present him with a special pair of gaiters?

PROSECUTOR: Sir, it seems to me totally irrelevant to the case whether the gaiters were presented to him or not, sir!

CHAIRMAN: I think the court will be able to judge that for themselves. I want to know why the regiment presented the accused with a special pair of gaiters.

PROSECUTOR: He used to do things for them, sir. (Resuming speech) The total value of the uniform—

CHAIRMAN: What things?

PROSECUTOR: He used to oblige them, sir. (Resuming speech) The total value of—

CHAIRMAN: Oblige them?

PROSECUTOR: Yes, sir. (Resuming speech) The total value of the uniform—

CHAIRMAN: How did he oblige them?

PROSECUTOR: What, sir?!

CHAIRMAN: How did he oblige them?

PROSECUTOR: He, um ... he, used to make them happy, in little ways, sir. (Resuming speech) The total value of the uniform—

CHAIRMAN: Did he touch them at all?

PROSECUTOR: Sir! I submit that this is totally irrelevant!

CHAIRMAN: I want to know how he made them happy!

PROSECUTOR (losing his rag): He used to ram things up their—

CHAIRMAN: All right, all right! No need to spell it out!

Now, clearly, the Princess of Wales is in no way, shape or form implicated—by me or by anyone else in this court … in this blog …—of waging any kind of war, warfare, strategic combat or special military … operation, but …, but … BUT! It cannot be denied that she—and her battalion of close cohorts—have nevertheless raised mountainous bulwarks of defences to a barrage of impudent salvoes launched against the good ship Kate (kiss me, or otherwise).

The question that reached out of the headlines and securely throttled me on Friday evening, between anguishing about whether to … anguish about concert-goers being mowed down by rampant terrorists in Russia or to rejoice in the extermination of one worthless, festering pile of human waste by another worthless, festering pile of human waste (and skirting the issue of whether the presence of the word human in both expressions ought not, by rights, to have relativised the entire anguishing process) on the tedious ground that they both deserved everything that was coming to them (albeit quite how, I’m not so sure). All of which served to precipitate me into thoughts Pythonesque this Saturday noon, and to wonder whether the Princess of Wales doesn’t get everything that’s coming to her.

Cancer is one of those things that comes to you whether you deserve it or not. You can provoke cancer, by smoking, or by inhaling formaldehyde, or ingesting PFACs, or moving to Chernobyl, but you can never (so far as I’m aware, but Dr Fauci no doubt knows better) guarantee that cancer will develop in anybody, least of all royalty. Cancer is in many ways the bullet with your name—and very little in the way of rhyme or reason—written on it and, unlike many another disease, is a no-fault ailment if you can rebut the presumption—and it is a pretty humungous presumption—that anything remotely associated in the minds of others with the reason you contracted cancer was entirely within your own domain and it’s only a pathetic lack of personal backbone and willpower that has brought you to this sorry end. It is if the presumption cannot be rebutted that insurance companies will click their heels along the entire length of Wall Street as they gleefully refuse cover under very expensive health policies and erect temples to the Goddess Vape. Insurance policy terms and conditions could save a great deal of paper if they were reduced to simply saying, “We don’t pay out if it’s your own silly bloody fault, the definition of which is set out in the following 20 pages.”

Mr Putin says Ukraine shot up his concert hall. Ukraine says he must be mad to think that. IS says it was them, but Russia either thinks IS and Ukraine are in cahoots, or that Ukraine is lying, as is IS into the bargain, because the party who did it is who they say did it, regardless of who admits liability. (Mr Putin would make a terrible insurer. If only his people thought the same.)

On the other hand Kate will bravely face her destiny and garner her inner strength and the vociferous moral support (no comma) of the world’s peoples and knuckle down to beating the Big C into—hopefully—defeat. Meanwhile, I really hope that all those nasty bloggers, Facebookers, op-ed writers and tittle-tattle-mongers in the worst of the tabloids all realise now that they were so very, very unfair to criticise the poor woman’s photoshopping techniques and farmers’ market shopping excursions when, all the while, the poor duchess, princess and mother—mother, don’t you know!—had simply been trying to carry on as if all would be well (if only the upper lip could be stiffened to the fray).

I’m also sort-of reminded (but who watches old movies these days, humph?) of a scene in the 1939 film Goodbye, Mr Chips, in which the titular schoolmaster comes into class to teach Latin the day his wife has died in childbirth, and is thus recognised for his stalwart sense of duty and lack of self-pity. However, only we the audience are privy to his grief, not the schoolboys in his Latin class, who act, at least initially, their usual, rambunctious selves.

Whatever, there is a sense of effacement that the press and public had been asking such pointed questions about the princess (whether out of curiosity or concern, one can debate) but the shock of the announcement at the end of the week does, somewhat, justify precisely the concern that had been expressed all this time (in short, the press hounded Kate to tell them how she was, who, after a few I’m fine’s, blurts out Actually, I’ve got cancer (with a subtended, you ruddy mullets)). No question, the princess has a serious ailment of the body, one that is just as serious as the court martial lampooned by the Python folk above: there is a cute mimicry between them: Her Royal Highness’s endeavours to get on with the show in the face of a barrage of interruptions does comically mimic the stage direction “resuming speech”, given that Palin doesn’t in fact get to resume very much of his speech before Jones interrupts yet again on objectively minor, unimportant aspects of the case, wherein lies the humour.

The difference here is that there is a temptation to cast photoshopped photos in the same light as the buckles on a pair of gaiters, which are perhaps important to the gaiters, if not the regiment, but not to anyone else. However, photoshopped photos are important to the whole royal thing.

Is the woman’s health not her own business? Of course it is, and, of course, it isn’t. I guess that somewhere you can find out what size shoe the king takes. What after-shave he uses. And the royal warrant will certainly reveal who makes his razor blades. Much about royal life is public simply because it is paraded before us and, so inured does the public become to this constant parading of photo opportunities, speeches and ribbon-cutting that, when it dries up, the public not unnaturally begins to ask why. This blog comes to you hot on the mercurial heels of a previous blog and your view may be that it’s yet another or that you will go and fetch your slippers, pipe and a cup of warm cocoa to sit down and relish what you’re now reading. Somewhere at those extremes, or perchance midway between them, will be the readership of this blog post. Because I haven’t instituted a paywall. So, you get what you get. And what you don’t get, tough.

Except, if there were a subscription, you’d be miffed if you then didn’t get what you were expecting and, concern for health and ham-fisted photoshopping techniques aside, the British public pays for Kate, Princess of Wales. Whether she delivers or not. And that’s quite a difference.

Louis XIV of France made his private activities very public—or as public as he deigned to make them, with his renowned grandes levées and grands couchers (in fact it was less a concern for publicity than a form of honour to courtiers, a sort of step towards the king’s favour). Whatever reason there was for Louis doing it, we think we know why the public needs access to info about royals and we know that some information is viewed as being sought in a vein of impudence, such as knowing the sum total of how much our king earns, a bill that is paid by none other than the British people who do the asking.

Yes, Queen Victoria (probably more accurately her retinue) had photos retouched to show her in the best possible of photographic lights (Oliver Cromwell, when painted by an artist in oils and asked whether the wart on his face should be included, replied, “Yes, warts and all.”) However, that was then, and this is now. Victoria was Empress of India, and never stepped foot there even once. If Queen Elizabeth said she needed to be seen to be believed then, unlike Robbie Williams’s Madonna, the monarchy shouldn’t be obscene to be believed.

Honesty and deceit are matters of the soul, and as such cannot be seen to be believed. It is their product therefore that must be seen, in order for the esteemed holder of the virtue to themselves be believed. And no revelations about a serious health condition can take away from the cogency of that debate. In short: we’re all very sorry for Kate’s predicament. But don’t mess with the press and advance that as some sort of amateurism gone wrong. There’s no room for amateurism in the relations between a people and their rulers. Perhaps that, to refer back to the sketch, is something that still needs to be spelled out.

Belief is a visceral thing (about which I talk elsewhere https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/superstition-and-photography, https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/ill-have-what-shes-having), but it doesn’t arise from what a believer thinks, it arises involuntarily from that which is told to them by him or her in whom they are to believe. Belief based on error can amount to either stupidity or fraud. I wouldn’t like to think that either of those calumnies is present in the princess’s case. Not as far as I can see.