It cannot be easy, being a laureate;
You have to be nice when you’d rather excoriate.
I’ve been trying to find kind rhymes for Camilla,
But I keep coming back to the word gorilla,

Or vanilla, beer-chiller and Polyfilla,
Manila, flotilla, thriller or Cilla.
It’s not much easier rhyming the Prince:
You get wince, and rinse or a plate of mince.

I’ve studied the form, from Jonson to Hughes,
In the hope of finding a right royal muse.
The key, it seems, to memorial verse
Is to make it snappy, without being terse.

To balance respect and a little solemnity
With just enough wit to avoid the enmity
Of other poets, who will call you a snob
Just because they didn’t get the job.

The verse may speak of tradition, and rituals,
The dresses, the flowers, the hats and victuals.
But above all avoid the subject of sex acts,
Diana, adultery, footmen and Tampax.

It needs to have a sense of occasion
Even though, despite much persuasion,
The Queen can’t attend, though she’d love to be there,
As she’s busy that day, washing her hair.

The poem must be polite and romantic
Without sounding hopelessly sycophantic.
Do you mention the rows, and the fights, and the fury
And admit that a piss-up in a brewery

Would be far beyond the limited talents
of our petulant Prince and the House of Clarence?
Do you write about who was (and was not) invited,
In the knowledge that then you will never be knighted?

Or do you, as a sort of courtier,
Adopt a bit of the royal hauteur
And claim it all went without a hitch, all
Except for that awful man Witchell.

Do you say the delay was planned all along,
In the hope that it might just win you a gong?
You might claim that Camilla’s especially keen,
Since now she can run in the 4.15.

I’ve been studying earlier laureates’ verse,
And mine may not be better, but nor is it worse
Than some of the tosh to mark royal divorces,
Weddings and births, corgis and horses.

Alfred Austin, eg, was a poet of note,
But when Edward lay ill, he painfully wrote:
“Across the wires the electric message came
He is no better, he is much the same.”

Who’d be a laureate? You hardly get paid,
And even if your poem’s good you still get made
A laughing stock by every other bard
(Who wouldn’t attempt a job so hard).

So spare a thought, this nuptial season,
For the hard-working laureate, bending his reason
To find something really jolly to say
On this peculiar wedding day.

So it’s off to the registrar, cheery and hearty,
Then back to the castle for a bit of a party
With a mixture of subjects, from dukes to farmhands,
Formal dress and no Nazi armbands.
Let the bells ring out from every steeple
A salute to the couple, from us (“Bloody People”).

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