Here’s a list of the things you could do this week: check out that exhibition of newly discovered Beatles photographs that has a winning shot of George eating an egg sandwich, put up a knick-knack shelf in the bathroom, see some friends you don’t really like that much, just to remind yourself why you hated them in the first place — or APPLY TO BECOME THE PRINCE OF SEBORGA.
Yes — for one week only, ascending to the ranks of the monarchy is something that has an application form which YOU could be filling in. Should Lady Luck be on your side, you could subsequently be winging your way to the Italian Riviera, prince of the smallest principality in the world.
In 1963 Giorgio Carbone, a local florist, declared Seborga an independent principality, and suggested himself for the role of Prince. This was carried on a vote of 304 for, 4 against and, indeed, who would contest him? The local florist is not someone to cross lightly. He knows exactly who has been buying flowers for whom, and he’s been up since 4.30am, tetchily arranging damp privet. If he asks you if you want to become an independent principality and install him as Prince, you say, “Yes. And thank you for those two dozen hot pink orchids for my Aunt, erm, Irma. Not a word to the wife, eh? Your Highness.”
The newly appointed Prince Giorgio I has spent 43 years ruling over what, judging by the website (www.principato-di-seborga.com), appears to be a very pleasant Princedom: a classic Italian village just up the coast from Nice, and protected by its own standing army. The Seborgan army’s name is Lieutenant Antonello Lacala, and by all accounts he is a very well turned-out and economical army.
Still, in these blessed times of peace, Lieutenant Lacala has little more to do than — along with all of the Seborghini — address Prince Giorgio habitually as “Sua Tremendità”, or “Your Tremendousness”.
Astonishingly, however, being called “Your Tremendousness” by a whole army — an army whom you might just, on occasion, have conquered single-handedly in arm-wrestling — isn’t enough to keep Prince Giorgio I in the post, and he is now resigning, encouraging applications for his job.
Alas for the constitutional experts among us*, this offer would appear to be a philosophical conundrum. For surely anyone who applies to become a monarch immediately declares his or her non-belief in the fundamental tenet of the monarchy — that small “hereditary” thing — and should immediately be discounted. I can therefore assume only that the whole thing is a trick, and it’s only those who don’t apply to become the Prince of Seborga who will be considered. This means that anyone who does go to the Beatles photo exhibition this week could be getting that call any time soon.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of a monarchy that can be assumed merely by paperwork and putting your hand up. Monarchy is a hairy, muddy, primeval invention, and it should be assumed in a hairy, muddy, primeval way. Call me old-fashioned and murderous, but I like a putative monarch that can raise a massive army and march on York, singing songs in which “blood” rhymes with “hack your leg off whilst screaming” all the way. If anyone wants to become the Prince of Seborga, it should be decided on how many weeping women and children a prospective candidate can have picking over a smouldering battlefield, searching for a loved one’s head. Not by answering the question “I would make a great Prince of Seborga BECAUSE” in 20 words or fewer.
In these post-serf times, of course, the usual candidates for replacing an exhausted monarch would be fundamentally incapable of raising an army. I doubt that there’s an aristocrat in Britain who could cobble together much more than a personal trainer, three gardeners and a very disgruntled au pair in the event of needing a personal army.
These days, the only people who could make 20,000 march on York are celebrities with a very devoted, semi-unhinged fanbase — Cliff Richard, say, or Morrissey. I should imagine that Oasis would easily be able to summon an army of close to half a million townies, hog-heads and lads run to fat — although any battle they engaged in would obviously have to have a gigantic accompanying support team, handing out fags, Tennent’s and curried nuts to keep their interest in pugilism high.
Obviously this means that I am ultimately suggesting that Seborga crowns Prince Noel Gallagher I as its head of state — but hey! If you believe in a meritocracy, then with album sales in excess of 22 million and a knighthood surely less than a decade away, that’s kinda the way it’s going anyway.
But then, if you believe in a meritocracy, you don’t really believe in the monarchy, which takes us right back to square one.
*I kept a scrapbook on the wedding and subsequent pregnancy of the Duchess of York in 1986. One of the photos, of her in an electric-blue satin ballgown, I captioned “A Beautiful Woman”.
Her Majesty and a battle of the bards
Ray Davies of the Kinks, who was shot during a mugging in New Orleans last year, was shocked when the Queen told him: “I hope they catch the b****** who shot you.”
Davies claimed the Queen said the rude but quite cool thing while he was picking up his CBE insignia at Buckingham Palace, according to GQ magazine. A Buckingham Palace spokesman has denied the quote, saying: “I think it’s highly unlikely she spoke in this manner.”
So what did the Queen say? Obviously, as an elder statesman of rock, Davies’s hearing has taken a high-decibel battering over the years, so it must have been something that sounded a bit like “b*****”. “Last bard”, perhaps — the Queen assuming that Davies, as a fairly forthright individual, has had many “run-ins” with fellow rock stars, or “bards”, and that this mugging was merely the latest.
Thrill over pills
It has been discovered that if a perfectly healthy person takes the Alzheimer’s medication donepezil, it improves the memory and reasoning functions. Not yet licensed for this use, the drugs are nonetheless available from American websites for $15.50. This raises the rather pleasing prospect of philosophers, lecturers and dons illicitly buying the pills, going to a run-down nightclub on the edge of town, necking their stash — and then sitting down for an ecstatic, super-charged session of Su Doku.
