Royalty complain about privacy? There was no such thing as ‘too close’

TV anchors grappled with the bracelets of sincerity, while the cameras zoomed in on two slightly unsure septuagenarians.

The King and Queen looked as though they were off to a jolly country lunch but got distracted. Picture: Chris Jackson/Buckingham Palace/Reuters/The Times

Who’d have thought it? Coronations are difficult to film. If I were to say what the whole thing most reminded me of, it would be a porn set: lots of people in weird costumes, reciting lines they don’t appear to understand, while everyone gasped and focused on one poor performer wearing a truly weird set of objects.

It felt incredibly, mesmerisingly intrusive – what you really needed wasn’t a camera but a hospital endoscope. So much for royalty complaining about their privacy: it felt as if there was no such thing as “too close”.

Again and again we zoomed in on two slightly unsure septuagenarians who looked as if they thought they were off to a jolly country lunch but got distracted and, suddenly, they’re being crowned on national television sitting on the “stone of destiny”.

Celebrities including Ant and Dec rubbed shoulders with 'people from all walks of life'. Picture: Parsons Media/The Times

Both Charles and Camilla seemed nervous, tottering into the church shortly before 11am. You couldn’t help, as a viewer, comparing this state occasion to the last one: the Queen’s funeral. Whereas that was a full-blooded, ashen, Wagner symphony with soaring camera work, this was a polite parlour game: a twiddling bit of Handel. We got maybe a single grand shot down from the top of the abbey.

And, look, I don’t mind Handel. It’s lighter, jollier, less judgmental. But her magnificent send-off cast a shadow. Saturday’s ceremony lacked hauteur and dominion; there was no sense that anything had happened; the abbey felt almost too small, filled with people like Katy Perry and the man from Stereophonics. Nothing dates like celebrities.

It began early in the morning, with anchors fluffing themselves in booths along The Mall. Everyone adopted a soft, sing-songy “coronation voice”, which is just like their “funeral voice” but with added syrup.

The quality of anecdotage was unusually dire. On the BBC there was a pre-prepared interview with Barbra Streisand about Charles once sipping her cup of tea. All of these stories follow the same formula. A mega celebrity is filmed, in low lighting, in some bar/indoor cinema/intimate Oprah-style bungalow space/recording studio, where they will recall the first moment they met “his Majesty the King”.

It’s always the same: they’ll be doing something perfectly normal, like taking a trip, or eating a meal, and do you know what, the King just joined in! He simply put something in his mouth! India Hicks, one of Princess Diana’s bridesmaids, could not get over the time the King had to “get out” of a boat. He literally put one leg over the edge and walked to the shore! And we think it’s the royals who are weird.

Katy Perry takes a selfie with fellow guests at Westminster Abbey. Picture: Getty Images

It is at times like this when the group delusion becomes suffocating. Television becomes anti-television. Channels desperately try, or claim to try, to reflect the “mood of the nation” but because the mood is “what a weird thing to happen”, they end up just making the coronation look how they want it to look, which in the case of the BBC is a load of luvvies, plus any black or ethnic minority member of the House of Lords they can book.

Oh, and Jamie Oliver, looking like an escaped groom with a hangover, telling people to check out the coronation recipes on his website. “You can find the recipes in all the usual places,” he trilled.

I don’t need to tell you that it makes for a pretty loopy picture of “modern Britain”.

In the church there was more “modern Britain": an extraordinary collection of “people from all walks of life”. Jonathan Dimbleby, performing a piece to camera for ITV after the ceremony, told us, as if shouting over a hurricane, that he had been seated between two people from Asda (I think) and someone in prisons.

On the screen we watched the minor royals appear, following the heads of state. Cherie Blair, like a Kipling’s cake; Penny Mordaunt, like a hostess who’d escaped from a superyacht fair in Sochi: she was the star of the show. She stood, for a whole two hours, at times holding a sword the size of an oar in the middle of the ceremonial carpet, which was bright yellow: slightly nicotine-ish. Was that to soothe Camilla?

Lionel Richie shares a word with Sadiq Khan. Picture: Getty Images

Nick Cave made his way the ceremony alongside with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Picture: PA/The Times

Ahead of the anointings, the anchors had tried valiantly to grapple with history. “The spoon is what I want you to look at here,” said someone. There was lisping about “the sacrarium”. Then there were the “bracelets of sincerity and wisdom” and “the robe of righteousness and the garments of salvation”. Actually, I think those last ones were said by a member of the clergy: the ceremony is basically a medieval news script narrated by vicars.

Clare Balding, covering the procession of carriages, didn’t quite know how to deliver the material. She’s used to Crufts, speaking about everything as if it’s a toy dog.

“You see the handrails there?” she enthused as the bright gold coronation coach trundled by. Oh Clare, don’t be chatty! Just give us the solid unalloyed historical facts, like they do on GB News.

I found Nigel Farage’s coverage, with David Starkey, hilarious. I turned it on at one point to find Starkey shrieking away with the channel’s fashion correspondent (yes) over Kate’s tiara. “Quite what is modern about a headdress made of silver bullion, I do not know,” he sassed. At another point he hissed: “I don’t see how a fascinator works with robes.” Giggling and bitching: that’s more like it.

The Times