ERM, WHO CARES?

I thought it was interesting that a tv journalist considered it worth asking Mr Corbyn if he watched the Queen’s speech on Christmas day.

Does @jeremycorbyn make time for the Queen's speech?

He tells @julieetchitv: "We don't watch TV very much on Christmas Day."

Watch @ITVTonight The Leader Interviews: Jeremy Corbyn at 7.30pm on Thursday https://t.co/6cGnx89wJ7 pic.twitter.com/AqVan9usnW

— ITV News (@itvnews) December 4, 2019

As it happens, he spends Christmas day with his family and he visits the homeless shelter. Both of these things are perfectly admirable things to do at Christmas. I was surprised then that he tried to give the impression that he did, indeed, watch “The Queen”, but kinda messed it up because he didn’t know that it was on in the afternoon and not the morning.

I was wondering if there were genuinely any people who would consider it a game-changer in the “who to vote for” stakes.

Does anyone give a damn? We all know Corbyn’s not a royalist. So why did he feel obliged to give the impression that he did watch it?

I think that’s sad.

• Incidentally, last year the speech was watched in these islands by 6.3 million people out of a population of 66.4 million (down by a million on the previous year), and fewer than 10% of the UK population.

I’ve not actually watched it personally for a long long time, although I’ve caught bits on Twitter or Facebook.

My granny liked it and when she was alive and spent Christmas day with us, it was on to please her, so I have a vague recollection of the type of content that was included…

There was always some detail of what she and her family had been up to over the year… her and Philip touring some ex-colonies; Anne going off to Africa do some “Save the Children” charity work; Airmiles failing to sweat in a helicopter somewhere; a wedding, funeral, birth of a royal high ness, or some such thing you’d be yawning about if it was your auntie telling you.

Then there would be a tie into Christianity, while she sat in, quite literally, palatial setting, surrounded by items of unimaginable financial value, reminding everyone that she had always tried to live her life according to the teachings of Christ (obviously excluding the teaching about it being harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle).

Then she wished everyone a happy Christmas, and they played her dirgy song.

Of course it’s all recorded in advance so that she doesn’t have to waste Christmas day with her message, so your mind goes off to her sitting in Windsor with all her family around for a slap-up meal cooked by chefs and served by butlers and uniformed lackeys, with dirty dishes taken away and washed by other lackeys, all paid for by us… while only a few miles away some of her “subjects” are enjoying cold comfort on the street.

It might be an idea to remind ourselves at this point that there are many people, and not just politicians, who will be working at homeless shelters and many more who will be obliged to make use of them, while her majesty and her ever-growing family, enjoy our largesse.

(*I wonder if the recent dramatic events will encourage a larger audience this year. Will people tune in to see if she mentions Philip’s actual car crash or Airmiles’ figurative one… Harry’s interview or the way that her Brit Prime Minister made a total patsy of her.)

Out of interest, how many Munguinites will watch “The Queen” show?