OK, I admit it: I find royals who get the giggles quite endearing | Peter Bradshaw | Opinion
Without wanting or realising it, Charles and Camilla have done something for royal PR by failing to control their honest laughter at an official visit to the Canadian Arctic, where they were treated to a display of Inuit throat singing.
The royal couple did everything but stuff handkerchiefs in their mouths. No cultural offence was taken. Perhaps some of those present remembered that the Windsors have a bit of form here.
The author AN Wilson once revealed a conversation he had had with the late Queen Mother about an excruciating “poetry evening†during the second world war at Windsor Castle that the royals felt obliged to attend: “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem … I think it was called The Desert. First the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the king.†Wilson interjected: “The Desert, ma’am? Are you sure it wasn’t called The Waste Land?†The Queen Mum replied: “That’s it. I’m afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked in a bank, and we didn’t understand a word.â€
Well, if you listen to the poet’s actual speaking voice on YouTube you may understand how TS Eliot got the Inuit throat-singing treatment.
Don’t push your luck
Until now, I thought the most tiresome political phrase was the insufferable “Let me be clearâ€, followed by a microsecond’s self-satisfied pause. That is intended to make only one thing clear â€" any deficit of clarity up to now has been your fault: you, the reader or TV audience or impertinent interviewer. Your irrelevant, low-IQ wittering isn’t letting them be clear so will you now shut up and “let†them be “clearâ€?
But now I realise that the dodgiest expression is “pushing backâ€. President Trump’s press representative said that his grotesque and unbalanced jibe at a TV news anchor’s appearance was a matter of “pushing back†at liberal hegemony. Somehow, “pushing back†is an aggression that styles itself as ideological counter-insurgency, but is flavoured with enormous self-pity and self-aggrandisement.
It feels like the petulant shoving that happens in a playground or pub car park between people who don’t fancy fighting as such â€" or, more strategically, like the covert shoving you might do in a crowd, which can be blamed on someone else if you get in trouble. Pushers-back can push off.
Lucas build-up
George Lucas, director and creator of Star Wars, has reached another career milestone now he’s stepped back from work on the great intergalactic film franchise. Usually it’s only former presidents who get a huge library or museum, but now Mr Lucas has one.
The city of Los Angeles has given the go-ahead for his colossal Museum of Narrative Art, which will cost him $1.5bn, create thousands of jobs and bring in an annual $43m in tax revenue. The building will be sited in LA’s Exposition Park, which is associated with expos and exhibitions, although perhaps the narrative term “exposition†appealed to Lucas. It will house his extensive archive of Star Wars memorabilia and focus on the art of myth-making and storytelling: he says the “concept of narrative … has been forgottenâ€.
Well, yes. Lucas himself was thought to have lost control of the Star Wars brand when he insisted on three calamitous prequels, messing up the forward-thrust of powerful storytelling. Maybe the museum will have a special exhibit, at the end of which you have to walk backwards to reach something not as good.
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