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Issue 13
Five Things We’ve Learned from the AI ‘Guinness Index’
A new AI-driven Guinness index offers a quietly revealing snapshot of modern pub culture.
By Gentleman's Journal
Five best jokes from the Royal Family
- Prince Phillip
- Princess Margaret
- Prince William
- Princess Anne (and Prince Andrew)
- The Queen
Words By Joseph Bullmore
Royals and humour usually go together like royals and long, fruitful marriages, or royals and being able to sweat. But now King Charles has embarked on his stand-up tour of the United States, and slayed our American cousins with a volley of zingers, albeit the sort of zingers written by a balding equerry who went to Eton and then the Grenadiers. Real slice of life stuff. Like this: “Now, I know you have big plans for the moon, Mr President, but I’ve actually checked the papers and I rather suspect it is already part of the Commonwealth, I’m afraid.” (Wait, is it?)
Or this: “Indeed, you recently commented, Mr. President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that, if it wasn’t for us, you’d be speaking French.” One wonders whether Trump even understood the historical reference, and the two figures seemed to exist for a moment in separate time signatures, or perhaps even separate eras, as Trump grinned with pained narcissism around the room. Charles from some long, sweet, lost Twentieth Century of the soul; Trump from the horrid, tacky, hunchback present. Makes you almost proud to have an unelected leader. America will soon know how that feels, too.
But let’s keep things straightforward, straightforward for now. Here are the five best jokes from the Royal Family — with “best”, “jokes”, and even “from” entirely open to interpretation.
1. Prince Phillip
The Duke of Edinburgh was a man of the people when it came to crowd-work — truly hands on, some would say — and couldn’t resist a quip or two as he met his public. Or his wife’s public. Introduced to someone at a state event, a gentleman told the Prince that: “My wife is a doctor of philosophy and much more important than I am." To which Phillip replied: “We have that trouble in our family, too." Later on, visiting an automotive factory, he said: "When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife” — though presumably he has someone to do that for him, as well. On his daughter, Princess Anne, Philip once told reporters how: "If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested." Later, while asked to comment on a botched kidnapping of Anne, he said: "If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity." But his most stinging barb came near the end of his life, in what is seen as a veiled jab at Prince Harry’s life choices.
"People think there's a rigid class system here, but our dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans."
2. Princess Margaret
The queen’s younger sister never met a husband she couldn’t divorce or a commoner she couldn’t look down on. ("People like you don't get to insult people like me. You get to be eternally grateful”, she once said to a member of the public.) She had an acid tongue, but that was probably just all the vodka. On being introduced to a star model in the 1960s, and told her name was ‘Twiggy’, Margaret simply replied: “how unfortunate.” She was known for her dirty limericks, including the one featured in The Crown which I’m told is accurate (historically if not anatomically.) "There was a young lady from Dallas / who used a dynamite stick as a phallus/ They found her vagina / in North Carolina / and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace". But the best line was properly one that was shot back at her. When she met Grace Kelly, Princess Margaret said: “You don’t look like a movie star.” To which Kelly replied: “Well, I wasn’t born into the role.”
3. Prince William
Prince William has the safe, dull humour of a head boy on parents evening. His jokes seem to strain painfully towards relatability. Just after the birth of his first-born son, William joked that "He's got way more hair than me, thank God." Later, meeting some Michelin-starred chefs at Houghton Hall, Princess Katherine told them that “William has to put up with my cooking most of the time.” To which he replied: “It’s the reason I'm so skinny!” Hmm. But he does at least have a good trick for putting a crowd at ease during a group photo. Just before the shutter is clicked, he has been known to say “who pinched my bottom!”, which tends to break the tension and cause natural smiles in those around him. Unless, of course, he is actually being repeatedly groped in crowds, at which point the laughter must surely stop.
4. Princess Anne (and Prince Andrew)
Anne is a jolly-hockey-sticks sort of gell. During the aforementioned kidnapping attempt, when her assailant pointed a pistol at her and told her to come with him, she said: “Not bloody likely". She later recounted what happened next: “We had a sort of discussion about where or where not we were going to go. I was scrupulously polite because I thought it was silly to be too rude at that stage.” She later told an anecdote about her brother Prince Edward giving a talk at an elderly care home while wearing a kilt. “And someone in the front row was heard to say: ‘is that the Princess Royal?’” She was aware of her horsey reputation, too. “When I appear in public people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground and swish my tail — none of which is easy.”
Andrew, by contrast, is the most inadvertently funny of the bunch. The Maitlis interview is a tour-de-force of alternative humour; a sort of high-concept performance art piece. There are dozens of perfect lines. Asked why he had continued to meet Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction as a sex offender, Andrew said: "I admit fully that my judgement was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable?”, which you really couldn’t write.
5. The Queen
Or the artist formerly known as such, at least. On being told by a rambler that she looked “just like the Queen,” she once said: “How reassuring.” Likewise, when a tourist strolling through Balmoral asked her if she had ever met the Queen, she said “no,” before nodding to her secret service agent and adding: “but he has.” (And then presumably: “no but seriously are you thick or something?”). She was at least clear on her own identity. The Queen Mother once asked her just who she thought she was during a tiff. She replied: “The Queen, Mummy. The Queen.” When a gardener at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2016 told her that lilies of the valley were poisonous flowers, she said: “I’ve been given two bunches this week. Perhaps they want me dead”. The great cosmic joke, of course, is that in the end it wasn’t flowers that killed her — but five minutes with Liz Truss.
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