Everyone can remember where they were when, on Monday of last week, they heard that Pete Waterman, of 1980s pop-production duo Stockhausen and Waterman, had died. I was on a garage forecourt on the A1 near Melton Mowbray eating a bag of chicken Fridge Raiders in the rain next to a broken outside toilet. And as the jolly earworm of I Should Be So Lucky burrowed into my brainpan, it had never seemed less appropriate.
Sadly, Pete Waterman did not live to see the timeless and dignified pageantry of Tuesday’s Queen’s speech to parliament. The most expensive hat in the world was driven, in its own luxury car, to an inappropriate event that, against the backdrop of impending starvation and Brexit-bonus economic disaster, now seemed cruelly tasteless. Prince Charles, like the mythic prisoner of a hypnotic cabal, listlessly intoned a draconian bonfire of citizens’ rights, whacked out of his gourd on organic wine. The jewel-hat sat next to him on its own velvet cushion, like an oligarch’s cat. If it were sold, it could probably fill every food bank in Britain for ever.
