The H-Meister Gets Hitched MP3
Read by Alex Woodhall
Kelvin MacKenzie, who used to edit The Sun, The Currant Bun (or The Cunt, as we used to call it round the Buck House breakfast table; unusually, even the QE2 was okay with the term), had this to say about us royals:
'They live in castles, they have eight weeks off in the summer, they don't work, none of them has the slightest idea what it's like to be in competition at the office ….'
Personally, being forced, age eleven, to traipse halfway across London behind one's mother's coffin will tend to put a chap off a tabloid. But was MacKenzie entirely wrong? Even a stopped clock's right twice a day, and an ape, in theory, could write a sonnet eventually. And one thing's for certain; the gen. pop. will have its pound of flesh. While as a prince of the realm, you're above the law in a number of other ways, the Faustian pact you didn't sign up for goes like this; sooner or later, you have to get married.
I'd fought this as long as I could. I'd even threatened to come out as gay at one point; that had shut Buck House up for a couple of years. Now though, in this post-Elton John England, would even going full-op trans be an effective defence from the dreaded walk up the aisle? Besides, as the Sandhurst class of ’05 will attest, I look bloody awful in a frock.
And the Balmoral drug thing had been a major bish. Depressed by the arrival of Princess Charlotte, and La Middleton's plans to shift me into the shadows, as some sort of deviant, I'd tried to off the other royals with poison hallucinogens. This, with hindsight, had been a poorly judged move. 'Bonkers' was the verdict, 'Takes after his mother.' On the plus side, La Middleton was no longer speaking to me. Nor was Great-Grandpa Philip, or the QE2. Dad and the uncles had seemed more sympathetic; distressingly, Uncle Edward had said he 'admired my balls.' But on the minus, this was the leverage Buck House had been looking for. Previously, they'd tried to find my weak spots. What was I afraid of?
'If you don't marry, Bluff Prince, you'll have to find work.'
'I could handle that.'
'Really? Doing what?'
'Well, I'm a military man. I could run the doors at the Ministry, or something?'
'The Ministry of Defence? We hardly feel that would be appropriate.'
'I was thinking more the Ministry of Sound.'
'That,' snapped the beaks 'is not an option. We'd have to hire security so you could be security. You stupid boy.'
'I see. Listen guys, if you could spare me the MI5 treatment? It's like one of those bloody awful spy dramas on BBC2.'
Still, this sort of stuff was all grist to the mill. Father regularly calls MI5 a shower of bastards ('Why have my letters been leaked, again?’) and given the family track record, few at Buck House were in a position to entirely insist on the virtues of wedlock.
But that was before. After the Highland incident, explained away as a food scare, but that could change, I was in the dog house, big time. Long term readers of my private journals will know I've got out of scrapes in the past. But this was different. Vengeful forces were now in play, and attempted high treason's not a good look for anyone.
So I was faced with an ultimatum, the one the Buck House beaks had been waiting around for a decade to deliver. I’d got away with far too much for too long; and now justice, in the case of the H-Meister, was finally going to be served. Basically, I had six months to get engaged, or it was game over. Open season on the H-Meister, no stone unturned, no mercy. Over fifteen years of japes and atrocities to be drip-fed to the red-tops if I put up a fight, plus a spell in the Tower, or more prosaically, the Scrubs, as a final fist to the balls. How much of this they would actually go through with if I didn’t accept their plea bargain, was open to question. But just a glance at the dossier was enough to convince me that a sad adieu to my bachelor days was probably now in order.
Options then. A frantic search through the old black book had come up dry; I was at daggers drawn with all the fillies I'd ever dated, or even shagged, and as for the debs I'd asked out, but never quite sealed the deal with, that was … not good, either. I could, of course, have hooked up with an innocent, some blushing young thing from the right kind of family, and convinced her that most of the rumours were partly untrue, at least for long enough to put a glass slipper on her foot. But I guess we've all seen how that story ends.
So this was the H-Meister up against it. Had a royal celeb been in this much hot water since the glory days of Richard the Third? In the court of the tabloids and social media, where justice was blind and Mercy the name of a Page Three lovely, I was in danger of taking an Edward the Second.
And then I remembered Delilah. Well, I say that; I'd never entirely forgotten about her, though I'd sometimes wished that everyone else had. During the summer of the London Olympics, in an attempt to repair my tarnished image, after the whole business about Pippa Middleton's bottom at my brother's wedding, I'd agreed to appear on Celebrity Blind Date. Where, in spite of Channel Four's efforts to pair me off with a bloke in a dress (what else did I expect?) I'd picked Delilah, a single mum from an estate in Lewisham.
After the show, we'd stepped out for a bit, to the Bluewater carvery, this strange other world, and I was papped at Alton Towers with her son, little Elton. But after a while, our love had faded. Okay, I'd got the commitment jitters, and virtually begged the Red Cross to send me off on fact-finding trips to parts of the globe where e-mail's spotty, and mobile reception poor - if anyone's wondering why I've been such an avid spokes-bloke for Rwanda lately, now you know.
As a result of my attack of conscience, the gen. pop. had learned, in a series of interviews in Hello! and the tabs, that I was 'no good in bed'. But this apparently hadn't come as much of a surprise to anyone. And seeing as Delilah had parlayed her dalliance with the H-Meister into a promising career on reality telly, I figured there couldn't be too many hard feelings. She'd moved to Basildon with the tabloid cash, and was now a regular on The Only Way is Essex, so perhaps our romance could be rekindled? After a skinful, I made the call.
'Hullo? Is that Delilah?'
'What fucker wants to know?'
'Little Elton? It's Harry.'
'Mum says you're a bender!'
'Didn't she mean “on a bender”?'
'No!! She says you're a nonce!'
'I see. Can you put her on anyway?'
'Or what?'
'Look, I'll buy you an ice cream, like I used to.'
'Mum!' the lad shrieked ' there's a paedo on the phone!'
How old was this kid by now? Six? Seven? He seemed advanced for his age.
'Okay, I'll get you an i-Pad …'
'And a gun?'
'Yeah, an AK-47, and a selection of knives …'
'Harry?' hissed Delilah, interjecting.
'Yuh.'
'How the fuck did you get this number?'
'MI5?'
'Figures. So what do you want, Billy No Bollocks? Harry No Hard-On ...'
'Delilah, I've been doing some thinking …'
'There's a first time for everything ...'
How difficult was this going to be? Obviously, very.
'Delilah, I realise, now, that perhaps I shouldn't have gone to Rwanda that time …'
'Fuck you! You fucking bell-end!' Always a spirited filly, young Delilah. 'You broke my fucking heart! All I wanted to be was the people's princess! My mates were planning their bridesmaid dresses! And what I've got now? TOWIE? The exercise DVD? You mugged me off, you cunt!'
'The … exercise DVD?'
'Google it, you knobber!'
Several minutes later, I was back on the line. The exercise DVD had proved to be … rather diverting. I didn't say that, obviously, I'm not completely deranged. I more just hinted at the broader possibilities. She was pleased, I think, by my renewed interest. If not exactly in the way I was hoping for. A short while after she slammed the phone down, she texted me a photo of her gym-toned bottom (always a bit of a sore spot, this) along with the message, 'Read it and drool! Arse-bandit!'
Clearly, I had some grafting to do. MacKenzie wasn't wrong when he said that this royal, anyway, doesn't like to work, but it had taken me about four months of solid rejection to pluck up the courage to ring Delilah, and I was running out of time. How could I prove I'd changed, when I hadn't, really?
Well, I watched a lot of rom-coms. Pretty Woman, the lot. The complete works of Richard Curtis. Lachrymose hours I won't be getting back, so no one can say I didn't suffer. From Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston, I learned that in relationships, it's important to listen. During our next phone call, after ten or so minutes about my crimes against humanity, I kind of tuned out; that almost counts as listening, right guys? But then Delilah heard me snoring and that was very much that. I suppose I won't be remembered as a great courtly lover. Stick me in a desert with some Arabs to shoot and I'm fine. But affairs of the heart are more complex than UK foreign policy.
So conventional romance wasn't going to work. I could have tried playing the diffident duffer, the Hugh Grant card, but I was too depraved – BumGate, VegasGate, SS-UniformGate; this stuff was barely scratching the surface of the H-Meister's x-files. I needed a guru, an expert, I needed a swordsman. Who did I know who might fit the bill?
*
'Uncle Andrew? This is Harry … Your nephew? No, not the one that's married to the totty, the other one … No, look, he is my father … Right … So I could do with some advice about une belle dame sans merci?'
'Crumpet, you mean? What, just one?' said the garbled voice down the line from the Philippines; I pictured him surrounded by dusky maidens, in a panama hat and leopardskin Speedos, a bit like Hugh Hefner meets Colonel Kurtz, 'You some sort of metrosexual?'
I explained the situation.
'Yes, the palace can rather crap itself if you go too far off reservation. But don't worry, erm … Wills? Zara?'
'Harry.'
'Right. So here's what you need to say to the chick ...'
I'm not going to tell you what he told me to say. Because if I did, you'd have the power, Uncle said, to enslave almost anyone. A bold claim perhaps, but how else had he got away with it for quite so long? The days when he was James Bond to Dad's Basil Fawlty are past, and yet he's still out there, routinely mired in hi-jinks of the heart. There's a voodoo involved that goes beyond being mere royalty. What good, after all, has it ever done most of us?
So armed with Uncle Andrew's forbidden knowledge, I talked Delilah into a crisis meeting at the Basildon Nando’s, ostensibly so I could beg for forgiveness. Or mercy, I suppose. And that was it, job done. A few magic words, muttered over the chicken, and it was as if I had her under a spell. Albeit one, Uncle warned me, that wouldn't last forever. A short engagement was strongly advised.
So, guys, ladies, people of Britain, justice has caught up with the H-Meister at last. Still, I had a good run. I hope you enjoy the wedding: you're paying for it, after all. Though if it's any consolation, I suppose I will, in a different way, be paying for it too.
(c) Quintin Forrest, 2016
Quintin Forrest’s short story collection Tales of Modern Stupidity came runner-up in the Best Collection category at the 2015 Saboteur Awards. The H-Meister Gets Hitched is the latest extract from the private journals of Prince Harry, as told to the author. Remember, you heard it here first.
Alex Woodhall has worked in comedy for the last 15 years, on stage, TV and radio. He DJs extensively around the country in clubs, festivals and evil corporate events and is one half of The Coffin Dodgers' Disco at The Phoenix. Interests include floodlit horse-massage at Crystal Palace and Gardener's Hour.
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