Now you see them – now you don’t …
Okay, I am coming out of the woods with my hands up – I deliberately tuned in yesterday to ITV’s live coverage of the Royal Wedding of Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank in Windsor, more of curiosity than anything else but half-hoping that the crowds would be sparse and that opportunities for cringe-worthy moments and/or faux pas would be ripe.
Although I am broadly and passively in favour of the monarchy as an institution, I take a fairly disinterested/neutral view of the further dynastic extremities of “The Firm’s” tentacles and – also being a believer in meritocracy – am unable to restrain my cynicism at the pompous self-entitled attitude of some of its more idiosyncratic and/or apparently useless/harmless members.
Here’s a link a vaguely-chippy and tongue-in-cheek review of said coverage penned by Stuart Heritage as appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN
And here’s another, from Tom Peck, as appears today upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
And yet. And yet … there was one truly spectacular and memorable moment during the proceedings that ‘interestingly’ seems to have been totally ignored overnight by the reptilian hordes of Fleet Street and all other media outlets you could mention.
Were any other Rust readers watching ITV’s coverage – and, if so, did they spot what I did?
[Or nearly did … the fact is I only caught the very last millisecond of it, albeit that this tiny opportunity gave me the gist of what happened].
Let me tell you.
As the rump of the wedding guests arrived, not long before the blushing bride herself, a Rolls-Royce-ful of pageboys and bridesmaids pulled up outside St George’s Chapel and disgorged its contents.
After being helped to arrange itself by royal attendants and indeed by ‘special attendant’ Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, this group of twee youngsters gradually made its way up the steps and into the Chapel.
Halfway up them the first ‘notable’ incident of the wedding day occurred when one of the page boys tripped when going up the steps.
Nothing too much to worry about, then, but at least it gave the smattering of onlookers and media ‘snappers’ something to get their teeth into and (hopefully) flog later to whomever would buy their images of it.
But then came the ‘money shot’ moment of the wedding to end them all – and yet (I wonder why?) my exhaustive overnight attempts to find a record of it somewhere upon the newspaper websites and/or the internet’s many social media outlets have proved a total failure.
As chance would have it, as said party finally reached the top of the steps, a veritable gale had been building up – a gust of which suddenly picked up the blue skirt of the aforementioned Lady Louise Windsor and propelled it upwards, to a point well above her waist.
Not quite a ‘Marilyn Monroe over the subway grill moment’ [reference the Billy Wilder-directed 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch], but certainly enough to expose the Lady’s dark blue knickers.
I assert that with a degree of certainty because – although I definitely ‘clocked’ said items – at the time I was not fully concentrating (as one never is when watching an hour or more of a Royal Wedding) and therefore there was an accompanying element of disbelief (“Did I really see that?”) in my reaction.
Having alerted She Who Must Be Obeyed – she then sitting in repose upon the terrace – to this spectacle, I returned to my half-hearted reading of a newspaper with one eye upon the ITV wedding coverage.
A few minutes later I was drawn to the terrace by a shriek of excitement. The Memsaab had found the definitive ‘money shot’ upon Twitter!
I naturally rushed out to see it.
About half an hour later a female neighbour dropped in for a chat and joined The Ball And Chain on the terrace for a gossip. I was soon summoned outside – of all things, the Twitter account concerned was no longer sporting the ‘money shot’ to which I referred earlier.
Perhaps they had been ordered – out of respect for the occasion and/or indeed the Royal Family – to take it down.
Or – having thought about it – had decided to take it down of their own volition.
Or even had been threatened by the SAS, or even Mr Putin and his GRU spying organisation.
We shall never know.
All I can repeat is that I have scoured every media outlet on the internet I can think of – even the UK’s Sun, Mirror and Star, all of which can usually be relied upon to expose the smallest and embarrassing of any celebrity’s mishaps or misdemeanours – and drawn a total blank.
But please do trust me – it definitely happened.
