Tag: Kate Middleton

7 Reasons To Celebrate The Royal Wedding With A Commemorative Pizza

Tomorrow, people up and down the land will be watching and ignoring the Royal Wedding in equal measure. I’ll probably be in the former category as I’ve been invited. Not officially you understand, but I’m assisting the photographer, Clayton Bennett. I’m holding his tripod or something. Clayton and I aren’t invited to the Wedding Breakfast but we will be hiding behind a curtain with this beauty.

Here are seven reasons you should join us and celebrate with a commemorative pizza from Pappa Johns:

1. God Save The Queen. If, like me, you are a royalist but not monarchist then you’ll probably have an interest in the wedding even if you are not caught up in all the hyperbole. Eating a commemorative pizza says, ‘Congratulations Will and Kate, I wish you the best of luck for the future,’ without going over the top. If you are a monarchist you’re probably from a generation that doesn’t eat pizza.

2. Elizabeth Who? If, on the other hand, you are an anti-royalist and/or a republican – like that Welsh girl who is now Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard – you can rid some of that anger by biting the King presumptive on the neck. Given that you’ll probably also be giving the world snide commentary on twitter, a pizza is the perfect accompaniment to keep you fuelled.

3. It’s Loaded. Some people will be having street parties tomorrow. It’s not really my type of thing, but food certainly is. And, if I were going or heaven-forbid put in charge of organising such an event, I would certainly turn to the commemorative pizza. Why provide various plates of salami, pepperoni, cheese, pepper, ham, sweetcorn, onion, olive, mushroom and jalapeno when I can have it all on the same one? Mixed in. On a doughy base. I would save a lot of time, a trip to Tesco and hours of washing up.

4. Sharing. A pizza, unlike a sausage for instance, is ideal for sharing. I hope we all agree that we could never share a sausage. Especially a cocktail sausage. A pizza though, loathed as I would be to do it, can be shared. And that’s what the Royal Wedding is all about. At least according to Big Dave. We’re all supposed to share in this happy day according to him. And if Dav’s sharing his pizza then I think we should all follow in his example. No double dip for us.*

5. USA! USA! I like Americans. I like Americans because they like our Queen. And Princes. And assorted others. And they like them more than we do. I also like them because they adhere to the maxim that when it comes to food ‘quantity beats quality’. While paying £10 for a mushroom on a stick of celery is okay once in a decade, I would much rather a stack of nachos for $5. Anyway, the point is that the company selling the commemorative pizza is Pappa John’s. An American company. So there you go. You know your royal wedding pizza is coming from a team who love royal weddings and you know it’s going to be huge.

6. It’s Free! Assuming enough of us buy it that is. Imagine if we all ordered a commemorative pizza. Pappa John’s would be inundated and unable to cope. They would never deliver it within forty minutes which means we get it free. All we have to do is whack it in the oven for ten minutes and it’ll be as good as new. Obviously we don’t want too many people ordering because if they do we probably won’t get the pizza until June. And it’s too hot to eat pizza in June.

7. Mystery. That’s right, you don’t have to eat the pizza. You can keep it. In the loft. Then, in many years time, when you have grandchildren and you are searching for an old train set, you’ll find it. Once the mould is scraped off you can put it on the kitchen table and stare at it. And then you’ll wonder who the hell these two people are. That Kate girl looks a bit like Queen Catherine, but who’s the bloke? He looks like Walter from the Beano.

*A recession double dip I mean. Obviously we’d get the garlic dip.

April 28, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Buy The Canadian Mint’s Royal Wedding Coins

7 Reasons readers, news has reached us – a mere week after it reached the rest of the world – that Canada has decided to commemorate the wedding of Kate and William by minting (never let it be said that we don’t know technical terms here at 7 Reasons) some commemorative coins. Here they are below these words (or above them if your internet is on the blink), and here are seven reasons not to buy them.

1. Because You Have Eyes. Right about now, you’re probably going through the same thought process that I went through earlier. Oh. My. God. How have I never noticed this before? My monitor has a sapphire stuck to it. But I bought it from a respectable electrical retailer, not from the JJB Poundworld House of Crap. It wasn’t there yesterday. Has Kerry Katona snuck in and accessorised my screen in the night? My God, what if the neighbours see it? Or my in-laws? They’d point at me in the street! I must get it off before people in shell-suits start complimenting me on the bloody thing…but wait…it’s not stuck to the screen at all. It’s on the coin! They’ve stuck it to the groom! The Canadian Mint have pimped Prince William and Pimp-Daddy Wills, he ballin’; he cash-money baby fo’ sho’. Move over, Fiddy Cent, His Royal Highness Twenny Dollars is in da house and all you bitches can suck his bad royal ass.

2. Because It’s Weird. I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation as to why Canada have taken it upon themselves to pimp Prince William. According to the BBC, the sapphire is there to “symbolise the bride’s engagement ring”. Now, I’m a married man, and my wife has a sapphire engagement ring, but we’re not royal, and, while I appreciate that they do things a little differently to the rest of us, at no point during our engagement did I have to wear a giant version of my wife’s (then fiancé’s) engagement ring affixed to my tie. This is just as well, as women should never marry men who dress like Liberace’s gaudier cousin. Nor should men. Nor should anyone.

3. Because (if you haven’t poked them out while looking at the $20 coin) You Still Have Eyes. The bejewelled coin is gaudy, but the twenty-five cent coin seems to have come straight from the section of the Canadian Mint marked Argos. It’s got a photo of the happy couple on it. A coin. With a photo stuck to it. Because engraving a second coin would apparently be too much trouble for an organisation that works in the field of coin manufacture. I don’t know what things are like in Canada, but where I live, if you find a picture stuck to your coin it’s an advert for a minicab firm, or for a bar with a drinks promotion involving WKD or Carling. Canada: Coins are not photograph albums, and nor are they pieces of jewellery. Coins are coins*.

4. The Free Market. Don’t just take my judgement on these coins. Well, you can, it will save you time if you just choose to agree with me as you won’t have to read the rest of this reason (the more sceptical amongst you will still have to) but the market has spoken. According to the BBC, the twenty dollar coin – the one on the right – will cost you a hundred and five dollars. But its value is still only twenty dollars. So it costs eighty-five dollars more than it’s worth. Or a hundred and five dollars more than it’s worth if you buy it with the lights on. The market has spoken.

5. Because You Can’t Dry Your Royal Wedding Mug With Them. In order to have longevity, a royal souvenir has to have a practical application. In that way, the event is kept in the popular consciousness for a very long time. I’m sure we all have great aunts and grandparents who still regularly dry their coronation mugs with royal wedding tea-towels and many of us learned about modern royal history by seeing those items as children. The only practical application these coins have is that we will learn never to go to Canada (in case they pimp us too) and we’ll probably be able to purchase spinning wheel trims for a Vauxhall Cavalier with them, or one of those singing fish picture things.

6. Because I Beseech You. Don’t buy these coins because – despite the random stones and pictures stuck to them – they’re still coins. And where do all coins end up? Yes, in my house down the back of the sofa. Absolutely all coins end up in that sofa, and we don’t want them. We have an innocent child in the house that we’re trying to protect from seeing such things. Please, please don’t buy them!

7. What! Why are you still here? Do you really need a seventh reason? Fine, in that case, go back to the top of the page and look at them again then! O Canada, what have you done?

*To coin a phrase.

April 11, 2011
7 Reasons Prince Harry Should Get Married Right Away

1. Brothers. I am going to state a well-known fact here, so bear with me. It’s important. Harry is younger than William. As an older brother myself, I like to try and set an example for my younger sibling to follow. What I don’t like, is when he goes off at his own tangent and out does me by doing it his way. Which is what he did with exams. And girls. It basically makes me feel like a loose part. The thing is though, he bloody loved it. And he’s not alone. All younger siblings like getting one over their elders. And what better way for Harry to ‘reign’ on William’s parade, by getting married now? To some girl called Bianca. From Essex.

2. Hyperbole. Unless you have been stuck on the toilet since early Tuesday morning, you will have seen the hyperbolic attention that the pending marriage between William and Kate has received. (I was very tempted to write hyperbollocks, but didn’t as my Mum might learn how to use a computer one day and read this). Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I am not very happy for them, I am. Indeed, in my role as a proud Briton and appreciator of our history I will no doubt raise a Pimm’s on the day. It’s just that so much has been spoken and yet so much of it is just nonsense. On Wednesday Jeremy Vine decided that the discerning Radio 2 listener had the ability to offer our future Queen advice. I switched off. I may be very wide of the mark, but I suspect that should Miss Middleton need advice she is far more likely to phone her Mum than download a Jeremy Vine podcast. And basically, my point is that Prince Harry should get married now, so that we don’t have to listen to all this claptrap again in five years.

3. Journalism. It’s a headline writer’s dream. You probably haven’t realised this yet, what with Wills’ wedding overshadowing absolutely everything, and not caring and all, but Harry rhymes with marry. That’s right! We can expect to see Happy Harry to Marry (Daily Mail), A Harriage Made In Heaven (Daily Star), and Son of Murdered Diana to Wed (Daily Express). And now that there are civil partnerships his options aren’t limited to marrying a Carrie, he can marry a Barry or a Larry too. Or a Keith.

4. Tradition. Over the past century or so, royal standards have eroded to the point where it’s now commonplace for royals to marry commoners. That’s right; the likes of you. William is marrying one as well. But there’s still hope. Harry can turn back the tide of decay by choosing to have a proper royal marriage to a girl that he’s related to. And that will be a return to the grand royal tradition, to the days when the many crowned heads of Europe would assemble for important gatherings at which there would be several hundred attendees, but only one face, and the only way to distinguish between any of them would be their facial hair and – in the case of the Kaiser – his pointy helmet and his propensity to invade the drawing room.

Where's Willhelm?

5. Hair. Let’s face it, His Royal Highness, Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales has a ginger bonce. Given the family propensity for hair loss – and we have no reason to assume that this will skip a generation, none whatsoever – he’s likely to be both balding and ginger soon. He needs to marry at once in order to avoid looking like a cross between Patsy Palmer and Prince Edward in his wedding pictures, because there is nothing in Photoshop that can rescue that. Nothing.

6. Divorce. Whenever anyone gets divorced, it’s sad. Even if there is much jubilation from both parties. To think that once these two people loved each other so much that they wanted to make that vision of spending the rest of their lives together a reality. Or they met in Las Vegas. Either way, come the final separation, there is sadness. I defy anyone who says otherwise. Unfortunately, for whatever reason (again, probably seven) the incumbent Royal Family have a history of unhappy marriages. So much so that they have employed a designer to add a little sparkle to their divorce papers. Because it will almost certainly happen again. Though I think it is unlikely to be William and Kate. I suspect, if you walked into any betting shop, you would find the odds on Prince Harry getting divorced to be much shorter than those of his brother. And while I hope it doesn’t happen, it may. And if it does Prince Harry may wish to find someone else to spend his time with. Which leads me nicely onto the point of this reason. If Prince Harry marries right now, he has more time in the future if it goes wrong.

7. It’s The Economy, Stupid. In case you haven’t noticed, Britain is in a recession. And it isn’t going well. To cut costs, we’re going to share the defence of the realm with the French (which is actually a good idea…for a sitcom. Or for Germany) and, if the recession hits any harder we’ll have to take more drastic action: Swingeing health cuts or selling the Queen or something. But wait! According to esteemed financial publication, The Sun, the forthcoming wedding of Wills and Kate will boost the economy by a billion pounds. That’s right. A billion pounds. So if Harry gets married sharpish, that’ll be two billion pounds into the nation’s coffers. And if we can get them breeding, in twenty or thirty years time, with the resultant glut of royal weddings, Britain will once again become one of the most prosperous nations on the planet.*

*And we can all start wearing top hats again.**

**Except in the cinema.

November 19, 2010