The Prince Charles Letters (10 page)

Dear Mr Caine

Like me, you’re a busy man so I won’t detain you long. At Palace Christmas parties, it’s my custom to entertain family members with a selection of ‘impersonations’. They have to guess who I’m doing. Between you and me, they’re not always very good at doing so.

Last year, I did you … and drew a complete blank. So, I’m going to have another go this year. Just to clarify, is it:

‘MOI name is MICHAEL CINE’

‘My NIME is MOICHAEL CAINE’

or

‘MOI NIME is MOICHEL CINE’?

Really, you’d think mentioning your name in the impersonation would have been all the help they needed, but still they professed to be quite stumped, even Anne. I got very exasperated, which made them all titter … which only steamed me up all the more. Why would they be so obtuse?

Yours – and ‘not a lot of people know that!’

HRH The Prince of Wales

William Roache

aka Ken Barlow

c/o Granada Studios

Manchester

England

18 April 2005

Dear Mr Roache

I’m not one of those people who thinks soap opera characters are real-live people – they say I’m out of touch but credit me with some marbles! That said, with the greatest respect, Ken Barlow is the person I know and the one I’m really interested in. You’ll understand.

So, if you’ll indulge me, I’ll address myself to Ken. You, Ken, strike me as the most reasonable man on television. We were married around the same time, we have suffered ups and downs, and often feel like we have never quite found our true role. Both of us have wrestled with our consciences, like a couple of ‘Mick McManuses’.

I was wondering, Ken, if you could come up to Highgrove and have a broad, free-ranging discussion about what’s to be done about things. If I could turn back to you, Mr Roache, and explain what I mean by this. I’d like you to come up to Highgrove, where you would of course be put up, but for you to sit down and converse with me in the character of Ken. It is his views, his counsel I seek. Naturally, you may pitch in as well – just say, ‘And if, Sir, I could just put in a word as William’ – but in the main, Ken’s the man I want to hear from.

Earnestly, yours

HRH The Prince of Wales

Bill Oddie

c/o
Autumnwatch

The British Broadcasting Corporation

London

England

7 April 2006

Dear Mr Oddie

Well, you’ve come a long way from the days of The Goodies! I remember guffawing like a drain at your antics back in the 1970s, especially the ‘Ecky Thump’ episode, to the point where my sister, HRH The Princess Anne, was quite short with me. ‘If one of my horses was whinnying like that, I’d assume it was in agony and have the animal destroyed!’ she snorted.

As a fellow humorist, I thought I’d share with you quite an amusing story. In honour of your work at
Autumnwatch
, I suggested to Camilla that one of the big Nature agencies lobby for some part of the landscape to be renamed in your honour. ‘Sort of, perhaps, Bill Oddie Hill, for example’ to which Camilla replied, ‘Sounds a bit like “Bloody hell!” doesn’t it?’ On reflection, I had to agree and laughed as if watching a giant kitten scale the Post Office Tower! Spoken quickly, the results are unfortunate: Bill Oddie. So, anyway, I’m afraid a hill is out of the question. Nature and profanity are no bedfellows.

Yours &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

Gordon Ramsay

c/o Channel 4 (Cookery Department)

Charlotte Street

London

England

4 June 2007

Dear Mr Ramsay

It’s plain from your television series that you wield a fine skillet, a talent I’ve always admired. I’ve worn the white hat myself on occasion, though I’ve always thought I could do with a bit of mentoring in order to bring myself up to scratch.

Which is where you come in. Do you suppose you could spare the time to come up to Highgrove and we could work together amid the pots and pans to really put me through my culinary paces? It would be lovely to surprise Camilla with a Courgette Gratin, just the right side of ‘gooey’.

One condition, however. I know you’ve got a bit of a short fuse so I warn you, I don’t respond well to that sort of thing: I get flustered and muddled up. Memories of my father, HRH The Prince Philip, come flooding back – ‘NOT LIKE THAT, BOY – GIVE IT HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU FOR THE TENTH TIME! – GOOD GOD, DUMBO! WITH EARS LIKE THAT YOU’D THINK YOU’D BE ABLE TO TAKE IN THE SIMPLEST INSTRUCTIONS – NOW TRY IT AGAIN. NO, NO, NO! YOU’VE MADE A PIG’S RUMP OF THE WHOLE THING! YOU’RE AN IMBECILE, BOY – WHAT ARE YOU? LOUDER, DON’T SNIVEL! THAT’S RIGHT, AN IMBECILE! NOW GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!’

Yours &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

Simon Cowell

c/o
The X Factor

ITV

London

England

2 February 2008

Dear Mr Cowell

First, I must compliment you for I identify with you. To have persisted these many years with such a singularly unfashionable haircut shows (as some might say it does in me) a defiance and quality of mind rare among men. As to your show,
The X Factor
, I wonder, as one distinctively coiffured modern gentleman to another, if I could make a request?

You see, I have a footman – actually, I have
two
, one for both feet (a joke as you’ve doubtless realised), who fancies himself as something of a ‘crooner’ or ‘belter’. He does a rendition of a song entitled ‘Wonderwall’ by the group Oasis, which I can only describe as voluble. I shouldn’t like to see him suffer the agonies of audition by television set, might I therefore suggest you come up to Highgrove and give him the once-over?

While here, and this is very much an afterthought, I’d like your opinion on a little act of my own. I shan’t give the game away at this stage but suffice it to say, I doubt there’s another act in Europe who can capably perform ‘When Will I See You Again’ by The Three Degrees on a ‘pair’ of eighteenth-century basting spoons.

Yours, in keen anticipation

HRH The Prince of Wales

Jeremy Clarkson

c/o
Top Gear

The British Broadcasting Corporation

London

England

12 May 2008

Dear Mr Clarkson

I should begin by saying that I don’t think we quite see eye to eye on this whole global warming business. You think it’s a lot of nonsense got up by the spinach sandal brigade, I say quite the contrary. And my sandals, I should have you know, are not made of spinach: they’re exclusively hand-stitched by a little man in the Andorran mountains, durable yet eco-sustainable. Bury them, and they decompose naturally in the soil, as indeed did mysteriously happen to three consecutive pairs during the years with my former wife.

Well, my point is this: under strict conditions, I should like to come on your television show,
Top Gear
. Not to be a figure of fun, you must understand – I know what tricks you blighters can play in the editing suite, which you’d be on your honour not to play on this occasion. I rather fancy that I could show your viewers a thing or two about the thrills and spills of eco-sustainable driving in a vehicle of my own devising, which I call the ‘Poundbury Pelter’.

Picture, if you will, a go-kart-like vehicle with balsa wood casing and ample room for one man of average-to-above-average girth. At the rear two recycled cycle wheels, at the front, a ball similar to the one on the front of a Dyson ball wheelbarrow. Beneath the seat a small battery engine, which can run for almost half a mile on a single bucketful of animal dung (even Mother’s corgis have contributed their bit, thanks to my faithful scoop and the faithful retainer who has the honour of being its bearer).

The engine is augmented by good old-fashioned pedal power. I fancy that I wouldn’t match the sort of times registered by some of your guests in conventional vehicles. Instead of, say, 1m 26s, we’d be looking at more in the order of ten minutes or so. But they’d be ten earth-saving minutes, hang it all, and I’d suggest, absorbing television viewing: we need to slow down the pace of modern life, I feel, not quicken it. Indeed, speaking of gears, I often wish life had a ‘reverse gear’. Though I wouldn’t care to reverse back to my school years, I’d slam down the brake on the Poundbury Pelter when I approached them (a trowel attached by elastic to some wiring, since you ask).

Talk directly to my people about it – they have my diary.

Yours, in moderation

HRH The Prince of Wales

Jeremy Clarkson

c/o
Top Gear

The British Broadcasting Corporation

London

England

21 May 2008

Dear Mr Clarkson

I was really most appalled to hear a reference in connection to myself to the ‘Poundbury Pelter’ on last Sunday’s edition of your show. It is one discourtesy not to reply to a man’s correspondence, but an altogether bigger one to use its contents to bandy about for comedy purposes on the television set.

I must now withdraw my offer to appear on your show and close this correspondence. It is a shame – the environment will suffer as a result – but there is a principle at stake.

Yours, &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

Al Murray

Al Murray’s Happy Hour

c/o ITV Studios

London

England

5 May 2009

Dear Mr Murray

I caught your show on the commercial channel at the recommendation of my father, who described you as ‘the only fellow on the gogglebox with enough bloody backside to talk the truth’. I must say, I was deeply affected by your fealty to Queen and Country, and must congratulate you for persisting when all about you were laughing openly in your face.

I regret to say that I know that feeling. Some years ago, I proposed we establish a private bottle bank for my grandmamma, HM The Queen Mother. I meant it earnestly but it was met with a round of guffaws from my family – my Father in particular, who roared, ‘Bloody good idea! Recycle her empties and in six months we’d have stitched up your hole in the bloody ozone layer and you’d have to find something else to do with yourself, boy!’

However, touching on the issues you have with the French: persevere. I understand. In 1962, I was forced to take High Tea with the then President de Gaulle on the Palace terrace. Haughty! There I sat, in an anguish of short trousers and strained silence. Great hairy knees, I thought, if this is the French you can bloomin’ well keep ’em. After about an hour he turned stiffly to me and said, ‘You ’ave do … homeweerrkk?’ And I replied, ‘Yes, m’sieur.’ Not much, I know, but vaguely cordiale. So do persist. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s worth it, but we must persist.

A votre (I think that’s right)

HRH The Prince of Wales

Joanna Lumley

c/o The British Broadcasting Corporation

Television Centre

Wood Lane

London

England

19 August 2009

Dear Miss Lumley

We have met before at a Palace function. I vividly recall remarking to you that you looked, ‘Absolutely fabulous’. I’d been advised by my wife to avoid saying this because, in her words, ‘She probably gets it about half a dozen times a day’ but I pressed on anyway and the silvery laugh with which you graced the compliment assured me that my original instincts had been sound.

I must say, I’ve been most impressed by the way you’ve ‘stuck up’ for the Gurkhas in the face of bureaucratic high-handedness and the way you publicly took down that junior Minister a peg or two. I have to admit to a frisson of envy: if I were to be scolded by anyone, Miss Lumley, I should very much like it to be you. I think I would find the experience both stimulating and instructive. Have I been forward? If so, then by all means scold me the next time our paths cross!

Sincerely, and meaningfully yours

HRH The Prince of Wales

Michael McIntyre

BBC Television Centre

Wood Lane

London

England

2 September 2009

Dear Mr McIntyre

I make it my business to keep abreast of trends in the light entertainment world and your name came to my attention as ‘one to watch’.

In order to assist me in acquainting myself with you, I wonder if you could answer the following questions for my records; questions I suppose anyone might wish to ask of you: who are you and just why are you famous?

Yours, &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

Emily Bishop

aka Eileen Derbyshire

Granada Studios

Manchester

England

3 January 2010

Dear Miss Bishop

As the ‘Street’ enters its sixth decade, you must know that I think of you as a constant in my life, the sort of person who would lend a sympathetic ear to a fellow. I know the character Emily and your late husband Ernest were without issue, so to speak, but I do regard you as a motherly type.

I wished to provide Emily with some food for thought: there you are in Lancashire, in the midst of some of the most magnificent, rolling, rural landscape our country has to offer, but few, if any, of the plots involve characters outward bound, taking in the scenery and displacing some of the soot from their lungs. Instead they’re mostly hopping in and out of bed with one another.

Is there anything you can do about this? Perhaps you and Ken Barlow could work in league to have a word with the ‘powers that be’. I would be happy to provide any backing you require, lending credibility to your cause.

Yours, always

Charles

Helen Mirren

c/o Equity

Head Office

Guild House

Upper St Martins Lane

London

England

10 January 2010

Dear Miss Mirren

I must say, despite its somewhat poignant subject matter, I greatly enjoyed
The Queen
and thought it largely a success. You yourself got my mother down to a tee – a grand old institution, but a bit distant and not always in tune with modern mores. The fellow who played my father, Prince Philip, was good, too – blunt to a fault, apt to say the wrong thing. And my grandmother: yes, liked a gin. Perfectly observed.

You’ll note I said ‘largely’ a success. May I take issue with the fellow who played myself? He depicts me as a self-absorbed, clipped, ineffectual sort in the chronic throes of some sort of emotional constipation. Well off the mark! It’s not a portrait I recognise at all, nor do my staff. Could you bring this up with the actor in question, suggest he might perhaps try some other profession?