“Dear me” is all I can say having watched the Platinum Jubilee Concert broadcast from outside Buckingham Palace and the Mall. The highlight was definitely HM The Queen exchanging views on marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear. Why she felt the need to do this or got talked into it however remains a mystery. It was all downhill thereafter.
In addition to HM The Queen there were plenty of other queens on show. First the band formerly known as Queen (but largely stocked by wrinkly lookalikes), fronted by someone who makes Freddie Mercury look macho, played a medley of approximations to Queen songs. You can always tell when a band has gone the way of all flesh when it starts to play medleys. Then there was that other queen who has reigned for almost as long as the real one, Sir Elton John. Much like the real queen he also couldn’t be arsed to turn up—and pulled the same trick as he did at the Diamond Jubilee Concert—pre-recording a song from his dwelling place at Windsor Castle.
Otherwise, we were treated to alternating sets by geriatrics and rap stars, all of whom were incomprehensible. Some because their false teeth were ill-fitting, and the rest because they were rappers. The latter, deprived of the ability to punctuate their songs with reference to rough sex, pussies and cunnilingus (there was young royalty present) were reduced to stringing together incomprehensible streams of consciousness. Amongst the geriatrics were Duran Duran who, while I am sure everyone wanted Rio, treated us to a song nobody knew and one of their lesser known hits; perhaps they have forgotten most of their back catalogue. Then there was Rod Stewart who looked like he was on day release from a care home. I’m not sure that bulge in his trousers wasn’t an adult nappy. What did he sing?: Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?; Maggie May; or You Wear it Well (which would have been quite fitting). No, some low key song which was probably within the limited range of his ageing voice and then, incomprehensibly, Sweet Caroline. Neil Diamond must have been a bit miffed that there was no knock on his care home door.
There was a stream of acts who were a mystery to most people, and as we neared the promised grand finale Alicia Keys came on in what looked like a gown borrowed from HM The Queen to sing her anthem New York – this, despite the fact that she was in London. Andrea Bocelli—who ain’t Pavarotti—sang Nessun Dorma, but changed the final verse. Instead of ending on the crescendoing “All’alba vincerò, vincerò, vincerò!” he sang something else while looking at the Royal Box but, since it was in Italian, nobody knew what he said. Finally, just prior to a mass slitting of wrists across the United Kingdom, Diana Ross was led on to the stage by her care worker and started to sing. Sadly, nobody knows what she sang as her microphone was not working. She had several goes at walking down the steps from the back of the stage to the catwalk—someone had forgotten to fit the stairlift—but the camera kindly cut away for a few minutes in case the Queen of Motown ended up spreadeagled in front of her loyal subjects. She made it down, but we still have no idea what she was singing.
All the above were the good points about the concert. Towards the end the ubiquitous Doom Monger General, Sir David Attenborough, paid homage to HM and was soon on to his favourite subject of how that inconvenient obstacle to progress, the human race, was ruining the planet. Everything the Queen had ever said about the environment had been put together in an extended play special of platitudes. This preceded HRH Prince William, determined to show us all why republicanism may not be such a bad idea, who extended the lecture and if that wasn’t enough, his father came on to lecture us further. All this was against a background of plants and animals projected on to the palace and ballet dancers dressed as bumble bees. We were spared an appearance by Saint Greta of Thunberg, presumably because she might just have told the Queen to f*ck off.
The greatest mystery of the Platinum Party is why the event featured so many acts from the United States. Surely it would have been fitting if the four countries of the United Kingdom had been represented by their talent. I am sure that Sir Tom Jones, who can still belt out a good song, would have done Wales proud. Then the Commonwealth could have been represented. After all, Sir Rolf Harris compered the Diamond Jubilee concert (whatever happened to him?). This was a truly dismal evening of mediocre talent, but it may have been emblematic of the mediocrities that are to follow the star act of HM Queen Elizabeth II. She has not been perfect and has certainly lost a grip of the reins in the past few years but, as warned many years ago by Bachman–Turner Overdrive You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.
Oh dear, someone hasn’t yet had their coffee. My American pen friends loved it all.
They know No Better…
Whoops… just a wee bit of prejudice showing there.
At last an opinion that I agree with. It was a load of utter rubbish. We have no idea what the Queen thinks about anything except for horses and corgis, but it is difficult to imagine her listening to any of this music. As a celebration of 70 years of her reign is this all she has presided over? What was the alternative – the decline and closure of our industries, the foreign takeover of car manufacturers and our essential industries and as you mention the nonsense of green policies. But we did find out from what the Queen said about Philip, Charles and William that she also supports it. She wants us to needlessly pay higher energy bills and perhaps spend the coming winters in the cold and dark when the grid system fails.
You left out Lloyd Webber walking across the set behind Jason Donavan. I also understand the reason for the poor sound with Diana Ross was that she was miming.
I thought that that whole ghastly show was utterly typical of HMQ, giving preference to a non-British person of colour – Diana Ross – instead of innumerable home-grown acts. Her fondness for sundry African and Asian leaders has translated into our once quiet and dignified land being a dumping ground for anyone who washes up on these shores! To me, this has been the hallmark of her reign, which in my lifetime has seen my country reduced from a decent first-rate power to a Third-World latrine and our quiet country towns turned in to no-go areas for native English people! Perhaps if HM had to walk to the shops for a pint of milk or tin of cat food after dark she would gain a new perspective on the destruction she and her collaborators in the major political parties have wrought! Forgive me for not cheering to the rooftops, but I remember this country as it used to be!