Bride and Prejudice.

Which is also the name of a Bollywood film. Apparently.

You know what? I was wrong about the royal wedding. Harry and Meghan are alright and I hope they’re very happy and of course they can invite anyone they please. It might be royal, but it’s still their wedding. It should be the happiest day of their lives (or Meghan’s joint happiest, since it’s not her first time) but in all fairness it isn’t really going to be all theirs; they have to share it with billions of people, the worst of whom will be commentating or crowding the streets of Windsor and waving cheap flags, getting burnt. They’re alright, Harry and Meghan. It’s everyone else who’s annoying.

All the major channels have cleared all the other usual crap from their schedules and are gearing up for 12 hours of hard core brown-nosing. To use just one example you can:

“watch the big day unfold on BBC One with Kirsty Young, Huw Edwards and Dermot O’Leary from 09:00am”.

9.00am!! I’ll tell you exactly what will be worth watching in Windsor at 9.00am tomorrow morning. Fuck all. Personally I’d rather watch the day unfold in a prison shower with Ronnie Kray. Kirsty is OK, Huw is a patronising prick and capable of stripping paint from a 1000 yards out but Dermot O’Leary is easily the worst of that browning bunch. I have been careful never to underestimate the myriad ways in which Dermot O’Leary is capable of boring me towards suicide. It is he that represents the thoroughly unchallenging, empty room of magnolia that broadcasting now insists on operating within. He will interview crowds and faintly famous people and he will crouch down to talk to commoners who have spent the night sleeping rough just to get to the front and toss the odd rose. His existence is unfathomable and his popularity asks some very awkward questions about the mental health of this country.

Amazingly it could go one level lower. I pity the poor sod who happens to be making a long car journey on Saturday and can only tune in to Radio 2. For here we will have to chew through an unbroken chain of shit sausages from the high priest of hot, farty air himself: Mr Chris Evans. I never seem to tire of hating Chris Evans. If anything I feel a new surge of energy sweep through my every fibre when I imagine him falling down a manhole cover and landing head first in a rancid, soiled nappy fatberg. He’ll be on air live in Windsor all day by the sounds of it and please don’t be surprised if he somehow subtly makes the whole thing about himself. He has a knack of doing that.

A lot of people are certainly stocking up for a big day and I suppose a lot of people are right. Perhaps the best way to get through Saturday is to avoid the wedding altogether or to drink steadily and just throw an axe at the TV every time anyone speaks. Such a shame because a wedding day should be brilliant. I’ve been to quite a few pretty lame weddings but my own was not one of them. If you’re reading this then don’t worry, your wedding was great. I loved my wedding. Sorry, our wedding. It was almost perfect and anything that wasn’t quite perfect was not quite perfect in a perfect way. Besides, perfection is overrated.

Ok, I lost my voice. And there were children. And one of those children was foul. And a few family members were a bit uncooperative/gormless, I got tiddly, the photographer disappeared half way through and ‘the wife’ and I didn’t get to eat any of our own wedding cake. Come to think of it ‘the wife’ and I hardly ate anything full stop. Moreover the venue left it until the last minute to tell us the music arrangements had changed, we had to leave our luxury B&B on our wedding night because the owner was a snobbish, sociopathic cow and the best man’s wife nearly put that snobbish, sociopathic cow’s head through a window (an imperfection only because I wish she had). The house, which had doubled as the ‘assorted females’ dressing room was like a bomb site when we got back at one, as one, in the morning.

So we sat in the garden, in the dark, in our wedding gear and had a drink.

And it was wonderful. It was the best wedding ever and I ended up with the best wife ever. I wouldn’t change a second of that day even if I could. Because it was all ours and no-one else’s. And it was fun. Despite the problems ‘the wife’ looked awesome and charmed the pants off everyone (certainly a lot more people wanted their photo with her than they did with me). Our friends were all there. All the rest of the family were terrific. The band cooked up a storm even though those arrangements were changed at the last bastard minute. The best man did a great speech and, quite frankly, so did I. I’m so sad I still occasionally watch those speeches to this day. We can laugh and moan about our wedding all day long and we never get bored of telling the stories; even if you do.

Tomorrow Harry will get his Meghan and even Prince Charles taking her up the aisle won’t spoil things. I feel sorry that their day will be filled with clicks and flashes and in some studio somewhere unqualified cretins will be blathering crap about them for the next week. But Harry will have his new bride all to himself by then. She just won’t be a match for my wifey, who I reckon could kick Meghan’s Markley arse any day*.

G B Hewitt. 18.5.2018

*Especially now she’s doing Aquafit and Zumba.