Describing the royal family as ‘funny’ is not, perhaps, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the Windsors. After all, anyone with a long memory remembers the horrors of It’s A Royal Knockout in 1987. Meanwhile, the performers who tend to get the biggest laughs from them at the Royal Variety Show are usually those offering the broadest, silliest laughs. Just think of the late Queen enraptured by the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of Frank Skinner, Harry Hill and Ed Balls (Ed Balls!) all performing George Formby’s ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ in 2018.
However, King Charles has always been someone with a more developed sense of humour, even if his long-standing love of The Goon Show might date him somewhat. The King was a good friend of the late Tom Stoppard – surely the wittiest man in Britain – and when he spoke at the state banquet for German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier last night, he delivered a series of jokes that may not quite have rivalled Stoppard’s sallies for incisiveness but made up for that with unexpected mirth.
Charles made the potentially risky decision to allude to the other great Anglo-German rivalry when he said that:
Football is, of course, another shared endeavour. Of course, I use the word ‘shared’ in the broadest meaning of the word: there was, one has to admit, some element of truth in the famous description of football as a game where eleven people play eleven people, and then, in the end, the Germans win.
The loud laughter seemed both sincere and faintly surprised
Barely had the mirth died down from this joke when he made another, referring to the German language’s love of compound nouns, which he called ‘a large number of very long words’. There was time for a self-deprecating quip when he remarked that ‘as someone who has spent some time trying to learn a little Welsh, I have some sympathy for the proposition that needless gaps between words are a dreadfully inefficient use of paper’.
It wasn’t exactly Oscar Wilde, but it was genuinely amusing. The loud laughter seemed both sincere and faintly surprised, as if the illustrious guests had not expected such gags. Certainly, it was funnier than anything his German counterpart came out with – perhaps in its own way fulfilling national stereotypes.
Prince William, by contrast, cuts something of a sombre figure in public – even when talking to the comic actor Eugene Levy over a pint. There is a furrow-browed seriousness to him that means that he is unlikely to find a guest slot on Have I Got News For You any time soon. It is, however, his younger brother Prince Harry who has always had the instincts of a mischievous court jester and is free to play the fool.
When Harry made an unexpected guest appearance last night on the Stephen Colbert Show, he held his own in a sketch opposite Colbert, even if his timing is not going to give professional comedians sleepless nights. When Colbert, playing the straight man, remarked, ‘Look, I wouldn’t say we’re obsessed with royalty,’ Harry referred to the recent anti-Trump protests, saying, ‘Why not? I hear you elected a king?’ Amidst a mixture of boos and gasps, Colbert sighed, ‘He’s got a point.’ Elsewhere in the sketch, Harry – apparently auditioning for a role in a Christmas film – made it clear that he’d do anything to get the part. ‘I’ll record a self-tape, I’ll fly myself to an audition, settle a baseless lawsuit with the White House – all the things you people in TV do.’
It may not have been subtle political satire, but it was amusing knockabout humour – even if it is unlikely to make President Trump feel any more fondly towards an expatriate who he has often publicly discussed expelling from his country.
On balance, neither Charles nor Harry would be advised to swap the day job – even if it’s questionable what that really is in the Duke of Sussex’s case – for a career gigging in comedy clubs. But after the year the royal family have had, a few light-hearted jokes don’t hurt.
Watch King Charles’s speech in full here:
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