IT’S always been a pleasure to share the National Anthem with the Prince of Wales when it’s unfailingly played before the 7am Radio 4 news on my birthday, which coincidentally is his, too.
I know this, having been handed a handy check-list of 60 factoids about the life of Charles, or the Earl of Chester, as I prefer to address him.
“He is proof that blue blood is no protection against baldness,” according to this list. Well, I can confirm neither is a lower middle-class upbringing on Merseyside, although I put it down to residing too near to Weston Point’s industrial-chemical complex.
There, the similarities rather judder to a halt.
My mother’s castle didn’t catch fire the weekend I separated from my wife, having never gained a castle in the family, but somehow still remaining attached to my wife. Neither am I the third largest landowner in the UK.
Fact three: “He was the only 14-year-old in the history of the world to have ordered a cherry brandy in a public bar. And he still winces when reminded of it.”
Having said more than my fair share of stupid, thoughtless and ignorant things in my life, I can’t criticise.
Slight nausea still overwhelms me when I recall years ago explaining to a pair of extremely polite foreign-looking brothers how those of a Middle Eastern background cope if they have no toilet paper. These men were Turkish Cypriots and certainly did not require my second-hand twittering on the subject.
Back to HRH: “He gave up smoking aged 11”, which seems very precocious on all accounts. Curiously for the upper echelon, “Charles is the only Royal who doesn’t like animals (polo ponies don’t count)”, whereas I do love animals.
Apparently, HRH prefers talking to plants rather than to paparazzi, and while I’m fond of plants I rarely get as much time as I’d like to chat with them, whereas I do enjoy bantering with our team of cheery photographers.
The big question that hovers like a poison gas cloud over all the birthday reports is the accession.
No, I’m not talking about whether I’ll ever get to rule over my adolescent sons, but one almost as pointless.
HRH has reached an age when many of the working population retire, but there’s no sign of the top job, his entire raison d’etre, becoming vacant.
“Will the Queen abdicate?” isn’t even worth wasting the neurological energy to formulate.
Apparently, Charles frets over this and endlessly tinkers with his Coronation details, which at the rate the Queen is going (and accounting for her mother’s longevity), will be in his 80s. Yet he has achieved more social worth than any previous Prince of Wales and many monarchs.
There are now 20 charities under the Prince’s Trust Charities, the latest of which is Youth Business International.
For all his grand ways and need for approbation, I know he has made a difference for the better, even in very simple ways such as his Trust paying for disadvantaged youngsters to visit the beach.
I do admire Charles’s green credentials (I want a reed-bed sewage system) and then driving around in a gas-guzzling Aston Martin (quite fancy that, too). But when he was born, Trafalgar Square’s fountains spouted blue water – for a boy. How green is that?
Why I like him most is that he keeps writing querulous letters to government ministers demanding answers. As we know, in spite of his gold-plated spoon-in -the-mouth upbringing, he has an uncanny knack of putting his finger on what worries many people.
Constitutionally, this must stop when he ascends the throne, which will silence this bastion of democratic thought. Strange, eh?
peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk
