One of the comments that made me laugh out loud during the Royal Wedding last week appeared on Twitter.
“This is the Super Bowl for girls” tweeted one enthusiastic American viewer, who, given the time delay, must have been watching her TV in the early hours of the morning.
She was quite right. The match of the day on Friday 29 divided the nation - and I don’t mean along royalist and republican lines.
“How long is this going to be on for?” grumped my husband as I got up uncharacteristically early for a day off and settled myself on the sofa in front of the TV armed with a strawberry Swiss roll and a mini bottle of pink champagne.
When I replied that I was fully expecting to be glued to the action for most of the day he said a rude word attached to a comment that would have seen him sent to the Tower in less enlightened times and stomped off do some ostentatious work on the computer at the other end of the room.
(Pretty much only time he deigned to look at the TV during the next two hours was when, on BBC1, Huw Edwards announced that “the European Royals were now arriving outside Westminster Abbey in a mini bus’” That made my husband laugh rather a lot.)
I suspect that, throughout the realm, the wedding split many a household along similar lines. While women were poised inches from the screens analysing every outfit with the level of forensic intensity usually exhibited by the pony-tailed pathologist in Waking the Dead, frustrated men were driven to gnaw on the Odor Eaters in their trainers as a sea of ‘designer drivel’ frothed around them.
While I applauded Kate’s exquisite dress and sagely approved of her choice of Sarah Burton as the designer, adding, “It’s a brilliant and fitting tribute to the late Alexander McQueen, you know”, on the far side of the room, lit by the computer screen, my husband’s face crumpled into a mask of incomprehension and horror as his brain cells tried to process what I was saying.
As far as he was concerned, I might just as well have been speaking in Mandarin Chinese.
“Oooh, I think SamCam’s in Burberry - lovely colour,” I squeaked excitedly as the Prime Minister arrived at the west door to the Abbey with his fragrant wife.
“It’s very bold of her not to wear a hat,” I added knowingly.
And when the mother of the bride, chic Carole Middleton, arrived a few minutes later, I treated my husband to a two-minute exposition on why choosing that beautiful pale blue outfit by Catherine Walker was an understated reference to Diana.
“How do you know all this rubbish?” he spluttered when my incessant commentary all got a bit too much for him (only he didn’t use the word ‘rubbish‘).
“Because I’m a girl,” I answered smugly.
I imagine a similar conversation was taking place in homes across the country.
I like to think that the Royal Wedding gave the distaff side of the nation the chance to rise as one woman and wreak a day of terrible revenge for all the hours and hours and hours of sport it’s been subjected to.
Just think for a moment. When the man in your living room leaps from his chair and yells something like “Ye…e…esss, get in my son! Lovely jubbly,” as Wayne Rooney does something, apparently, brilliant with a ball while running around the pitch for England, do you find yourself thinking:
a) “My word, the way that man read the positioning of the defenders there and managed to achieve an effective goal attack position in tandem with a perfect feeder shot from Peter Crouch was outstanding“.
Or
b) “That Rooney boy really looks like a potato.”
Obviously, as sport is so relentlessly dull and unattractive, most normal females are thinking the latter there, but none of us would have the temerity to challenge the in-depth commentary of the men about the house with something as insulting as “how do you know all this cr*p?” - because boy stuff is always really important.
A small survey carried out among family and friends revealed that last Friday many husbands, brothers, fathers and boyfriends chose to leave the house to do man things like play golf or wash the car while their women watched the wedding on TV.
The phenomenon wasn’t confined to Blighty.
When it became painfully clear that my husband wasn’t interested in my running commentary I turned to Twitter for support, which was when I saw the excited and entirely accurate transatlantic tweet (above) about the Super Bowl.
I have to say that my Royal Wedding morning perked up when I realised there were millions of women out there eager to have a chat (in no more than 140 characters) about the drama unfolding on screen.
It certainly added to the gaiety of the occasion.
“Princess Michael of Kent has brought her own satellite dish to the Abbey” tweeted one wag as ‘Princess Pushy’ rocked up at the west door wearing a hat bigger than a paddling pool.
“Wouldn’t want to be stuck behind her” tweeted another.
“Not unless you were Beatrice or Eugene - take a look at ITV NOW!” someone replied.
There was a minute of Twitter silence as we all flipped channels, then multiple tweets along the lines of, “OMG. #Beatrice&Eugene!” or “#Beatrice&Eugene what were they thinking?”
Every fairytale has its ugly sisters and unfortunately this one had Fergie's daughters. I feel for them, I really do. I mean, we all made terrible fashion mistakes when we were younger, didn’t we?
It’s just that ours weren’t broadcast to an audience of billions around the world.
“#Beatrice looks like a giant nude stag” tweeted one horrified viewer.
“#Beatrice - nude is very on-trend and hat is Philip Treacy” tweeted a kinder soul. (For males reading this I should, perhaps, point out that Philip Treacy is the Frank Lampard of hat design).
Actually, I did call my husband over to have a look at poor Bea’s hat, but at that moment the cameras hopped to the entrance of the Abbey where the bride and bridesmaids were assembling.
Pippa, in that slinky little white dress, was bending over to arrange Kate’s train, her lovely shiny bottom - all pert and round and peachy - filled the screen.
“Now, she looks very nice,” opined my husband - in his momentous first ‘fashion’ comment on the wedding.
Apparently he wasn’t alone. It was at that very moment that jaded, frocked-out males across the land sat up in their armchairs and stated to take a proper manly interest in #RW11, or more accurately, the “#hotnessofPippa”.
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