You wouldn’t usually look to the Royal Mint or our reigning monarch for finger-on-the-pulse, zeitgeist-surfing innovations. After all, one is the UK’s oldest company and the other got his first proper job aged 73. However, last week’s unveiling of the first coins to commemorate King Charles III takes the Duchy Original oaten biscuit.
At first glance, the new coinage looks nice enough. They’re, you know, coins. Remember them? They used to jangle around in your pocket, weigh down your wallet or gather dust down the back of the sofa. You put them in parking meters and vending machines. You collected them in giant whisky bottles and tossed them into charity collection buckets. You’d flip them and call heads or tails, magically pull them from behind gullible children’s ears or put them in Christmas puddings so a relative could break a tooth. Loose change. Shrapnel. What a blast from the past. Peter Kay should do a nostalgic riff about coins in his next standup set, just after the bit about Spangles and Raleigh Choppers.
