An hour into The Queen ’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration last Sunday night, Pip Schofield had a message for viewers: “You will see horses lying down in a sleeping position.”
To which you could only respond “Why? Is Alan Titchmarsh going to tell some more royal anecdotes?”
It was just another line from Pip’s commentary script though. A script which, arguably, peaked when he randomly told us about France’s La Garde Républicaine, whose riders must take their horse dung back to Paris to be used as mushroom fertiliser.
Let’s just say recycled horsesh** was very much the order of the night.
Meanwhile, did Tom Cruise let the side down or what?
First, when Pip asked what he thought of the Queen, Cruise failed to leap up on his chair and give us another “I love this woman!” Oprah Winfrey Show moment.
As for treating us to a quick Jerry Maguire-style “Show me the monarchy!”? Cruise was having none of it. If he wasn’t going to put on a bit of a show, you had to wonder why the hell Cruise was even there.
We soon found out. One shoehorned anecdote involving Prince Philip and fighter pilots later and – bam! – there it was.
Pip’s swooning co-host Julie Etchingham duly asked Tom to tell us all about his Top Gun sequel. To be fair, Tom was in good company. The ad breaks were littered with promos for ITV’s upcoming shows, while the gaps between the live and pre-recorded footage from It’s A Royal Trot Out at Windsor Castle were filled with ITV faces paying tribute to a great woman who could yet slide another honour their way.
Still, unless she was glued to the ITV Hub in the back of her Range Rover, the Queen would have been spared such tawdry commercialism.
Sadly, there was no escaping the Grand Old Duke of Brownnoseshire, Titchmarsh, who closed the show in the arena with such a flagrant display of toadying the Queen would have been forgiven for checking her watch.
Or gesturing to La Garde Républicaine to go and grab their buckets.
