When I was five I stood in the rain waiting for Queen Elizabeth. I was expecting Liz Taylor dripping in diamonds when a middle-aged lady wearing a hat like a window cleaner’s bucket drove past. She wasn’t even in a Rolls Royce. “Wave at the Queen!” Mummy said. And I did, though my wave was more international salute than royal flutter.

Fast forward to me as a crazy teen, running away from home for the first time. My cousin, gay as a summer’s day, smuggled me into Balmoral Castle, where he was working as one of QEII’s servants, serving stodgy food six times a day.

It’s not hard to see why camp-as-a-cracker Diana became anorexic in this atmosphere. Flabby folk crawling around the tartan rugs with corgis had me reaching for the puke bucket, and I’m not a bulimic—I lack the commitment for it.

I made up my mind there and then that when I could afford servants they would be deaf-mute eunuchs. Gossip about the royal family, usually from people paid to wipe their brown bits, reminds you why it’s best to go to the toilet without a reliable witness.

Before the police caught up with me and marched me back to school, I’d seen Prince Charles in drag, got corgi poo on my shoe, and been put in charge of a prince in a pram while his nanny flirted with his detective. Being traumatized at Balmoral made me wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed at home with the creepy couple known as Mum and Dad. 

Everybody, including Wills and Kate, knows that Queen Victoria and King David are the real royal family, even though they live in exile in L.A. Victoria designs dresses, Kate just wears them. She’s thin and dim, which are the right credentials for the Princess gig, but looks like a tired chicken in too much fake tan. Queen Vic has an heir and three spares, but Kate’s almost too old already to give birth to anything other than an enema. She’s busy trying to be a celebrity, but Prince Harry is better at it with his blondes, his bar bills and his stint in rehab before he left Eton.

When Prince Charles does the celeb circuit, hobnobbing with Robert Redford about saving the planet, he prolly doesn’t mention he sells jam in big green boxes, which must have killed a million trees. Charles married a nag while Princess Anne just rides them. There are ugly rumors about what goes on inside her horse box, possibly started by the animals who’d prefer to be abused by Catherine.

I haven’t been in a sauna since seeing Princess Anne naked when she was our neighbor in Dolphin Square, a London apartment building which used to have its own brothel. Our creepy neighbors included Foreign Secretary William Hague, though fortunately I haven’t seen his willy.

While her family yack away, usually on tapped phones, the Queen keeps her mouth shut. Maybe you would sulk, too, if you were forced to wear those totally tragic suburban dresses and never allowed to tell another head of state to go fuck a goat. She can’t even cut off anyone’s head, like the scarlet virgin Elizabeth I. And she has to suffer the humiliation of not being the richest person in England anymore.

But the Queen, like Kate Moss, is clever enough never to be photographed eating. She preserves as much mystique as anyone can who has all the glamour of a bored granny. Despite being decadent, the royal family survives, resilient as the cockroaches allegedly living in Buckingham Palace.

Diana wasn’t hard enough to wear a crown, which gave her a massive headache. I doubt if Princess Catherine will manage much more than a tiara if her bony ass ever gets a chance to sit on the throne.

But the Queen has had the crown jewels sitting on her crash-helmet hairdo for 60 years, outliving Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and the rest of old-school Hollywood. She can’t escape to L.A. to live in the sunshine along with former flower of the dustbin, Johnny Rotten, who wrote a new version of God Save The Queen to celebrate her Silver Jubilee.

Happy Diamond Jubilee, Your Majesty. England’s still dreaming.

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