Cheerio Prince.

Before you begin – this is not a very late obituary for the artist formerly known as Prince. Just in case you were getting excited.

Oh, the relief. Quick, set the bells ringing in every belfry across the land. Issue a new set of commemorative stamps perhaps? Maybe a special bank holiday later this year? No, maybe a new, permanent bank holiday, when proud British citizens can unfold their arms and come together on the streets to celebrate. There will be banners and bunting and tea and fizzy pop and giant, unmissable pork pies. The Morris dancers will gaily hop and jingle away outside the village inn and children (of an appropriate age) will stage reconstructions of a sequence of events which almost rocked our monarchy and nation to the core. Verily shall we smile the smile of blessed gratitude and happiness and lo, the green fields and bustling, reborn anew towns of merry Albion shall chatter of happy tales and of a brave, chivalrous prince who drew his mighty sword and smote the dragon of injustice and mistruth. We will call it Prince Andrew’s Day, to mark this momentous moment of most momentous momentitude (that’s a made up word, but it works). But on the other hand, fuck that.

The little shit. He’s only gone and ducked out of it. His shifty lawyers must be glad the whole thing is over; they might not be on the payroll much longer but even their corrupt hearts must feel a tickle of extra moral decay deep inside, if only from having to chew every spoonful of the sewage they’ve been thrown recently. I expect Andrew will be very chuffed indeed. He’ll be locked away in some fuck bunker somewhere, readying himself to emerge triumphant, though in his pasty, haunted, ugly face you can see he must know that the game is up already. This, after all, is a man with only three real friends left in the world: himself, his reflection in the mirror and Fergie. And even she must have her doubts. Come to think of it I wouldn’t be surprised if his reflection thought he was a bit of a cunt as well. Perhaps chuffed isn’t the word then. Perhaps he might be feeling a bit lighter on his feet, at best. A bit more upbeat than he has been lately, only when he opens the curtains to scan the cold wind blow across an empty courtyard that will never fill again it might bring him back to earth. He’ll feel lucky that this didn’t go down to the wire after all, because he must have known it could easily have gone against him. The little shit.

To think that at one point our monarchical system would have legitimately allowed this prick to be a king. How ridiculous is that?! He couldn’t be king of his own commode. That our gallant hero has managed to cling onto being a prince is enough of a warped miracle – for him at least – frankly he deserves nothing of nothing. No, less than that. I hope that the huge sum of money he’s going to have to pay out of court is even more massive than our collective highest best guesses. I hope it’s billions of dollars. No, trillions. And just imagine if it turns out that it’s coming from public money (as in, essentially, all the money that the royal family has ever had or, as some would put it ‘earned’), well that would be outrageous. Perhaps he’ll have to sell some lands or another chalet or his soul again, once he’s grown a new one (which will still be dead and empty). Perhaps he’ll have to pimp out Fergie to some awful, depraved Latvian trafficking gang; the tragedy being that if he had to, he probably would. The little shit.

There is some comfort in knowing that we might now be able to draw some sort of line underneath this grotty, bilious, serpentine affair. We may never know what the final cost will be but we know that he’s paying it to stop having to go to court to answer questions about someone he claims he has no knowledge of ever meeting. Why would someone do that? Why would they do that unless they were shitting themselves because they know their tiny balls have been gently warming up the edge of a particularly well sharpened razor blade? Why would you agree to pay millions of dollars to compensate someone you have never met for doing something you couldn’t possibly have done because you have never met them? Except in that very real looking photo, when you met them. The little shit.

Of course, we can all understand his angle on the whole thing: he is as guilty as hell but he’s chosen to buy his freedom, despite it leaving him slightly less popular than malaria. Maybe he’ll have a few quid left to splash out on a little holiday, get away from it all – perhaps a few nights sweating in some Bangkok basement club, or up to his worthless nuts in a sleazy mate Sheikh’s harem. Oddly, some are asking what he can do to work his way back into favour but surely that’s a target to far. Surely it’s best that he just kept his head down and vanished from everything as quickly and as quietly as possible. His death should not be mourned and his life is not worth remembering (note: it wasn’t much worth remembering before all this shit kicked off anyway). In summary then, we should move on and he should, well, fuck off. The little shit.

G B Hewitt. 16.02.2022