Eyebrows have been raised with the announcement that the Tom Cruise will host part of the celebration – but can anything see off the Gardeners’ World heavyweight?
At this stage it’s honestly hard to know what the Queen thinks of her imminent platinum jubilee. On the one hand, the outpouring of patriotic pageantry will provide a perfect distraction from all the terrible things her family keeps doing. But on the other, she’s going to have to sit through an awful lot of faff.
This week, the centrepiece of this faff was announced. Set within the grounds of Windsor Castle, the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebration will take place in front of a live audience of 4,000, and reportedly cover 400 years of British history. Helen Mirren will play Queen Elizabeth I and deliver a speech from 1588. There will be a long section about the Gunpowder Plot. There will be a lot of horses; 500 of them, in fact. And Katherine Jenkins. And Ant and Dec. It sounds tortuous. The Queen has had to put up with this sort of thing for 70 years now. You can’t help but feel that she’d probably just prefer a quiet night in with the snooker.
