It's a difficult job being head of the British monarchy – you have to constantly show the public that you're in touch with modern moods and culture, at least until you're behind closed doors when you can go and eat a swan or something.
But that's not enough for the British public – it wants to see what the Queen is like all the time; 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Short of posting daily Diddy-style soundbites on YouTube, the Queen has never been able to do this – until now. The BBC has somehow coerced the Queen into starring in her very own reality TV show, entitled The Monarchy. And if The Monarchy is a success, it's hoped that the Queen will then go on to become a judge on X Factor and score a lucrative job doing Asda commercials.
As far as the Royal family goes, it hasn't been a bad year. No castles have burnt down, no in-laws have died in messy car crashes – in fact, the worst it's got has been Prince Harry groping a woman's breasts on the front page of a newspaper which – by his Nazi-dressing, drug-taking standards – is pretty tame. But rather than sit back and be thankful that she can eat her 137-course meals in front of Deal Or No Deal while Rolf Harris paints her in peace, the Queen wants more.
Thanks to Helen Mirren playing the Queen in that The Queen film that nobody saw, everybody now wants to see the machinations of Royal life behind the scenes; and that's what the Queen is giving them. According to BBC News, the Queen is making her own reality TV show called The Monarchy, where the British public will get to see exactly what it's like to be an 80-year-old woman shuffling round a great big house all the time:
The Queen has agreed to take part in a BBC documentary along with members of her staff which will detail all their duties within the Royal household. Filming will include coverage of the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations, to the State Opening of Parliament. The programme makers, who also made the three-part documentary The Queen's Castle, have been given access to film the Queen and her staff for a year.
Andy Goodsir of HTI, one of the production companies involved in making the show, is promising that you will be blown away by:
"an unprecedented insight into the way in which the Monarch carries out not only her traditional constitutional roles, but also her duties as a modern head of state."
Woo-hoo! The Monarchy sure does sound like… um… quite a dull TV show actually. But perhaps, in an attempt to show how in touch with the people she really is, the Queen will copy well-known incidents from other reality TV shows. Perhaps we'll see the Queen self-consciously babble about sex all the time like in the Britney Spears reality TV show, or fire one of her pointless offspring every week like in The Apprentice, or maybe dress in a pink leotard and pretend to be a cat like George Galloway in Celebrity Big Brother.
Just so long as we never have to witness Prince Phillip doing a Bobby Brown and talking about "dootie bubbles"…
Read more:
BBC Crew To Film Royal Household – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]