Oh yes, it will be televised. I wonder if it will be on a Saturday or not, since we’re not getting a bank holiday.

It’s also infinitely preferable from a security perspective. Smaller and more easily contained crowds and no public transfer of the main participants.

Don’t worry, it will be easy to avoid the Windsor area at the time. You may have to skip seeing Windsor Castle if you’re into that sort of thing, but that’s about it. London and everywhere else will be unaffected (but there are always hordes of tourists in May, royal wedding or not).

I’m pretty sure most people are referring to Harry’s use of the “p” word to describe one of his fellow soldiers (apparently it was his nickname). Appalling and inappropriate, but very much in keeping with the Forces sense of humour and not something he came up with on his own.

Your way sounds excellent (and I suspect Harry would very much prefer that, if he could get away with it). I vote for Windsor, not that anyone cares. Central London is often disrupted at the weekend by demos etc, we don’t need to add a royal wedding to it.

Rubbish. The Queen danced with the president of Ghana at its independence celebration in 1961, shocking (white) South Africans. The one and only time she’s been political was when she let it be known that she opposed Thatcher’s apartheid appeasement. She will be fine with this.

Dear god. I am solidly working class myself (and very happy to be so) but why anyone would want to put any teenager through a debutante ball boggles the mind. It’s all nouveau riche Russians, Middle Easterners, Chinese and Americans. No actual aristocrats would go anywhere near such a thing (unless they were being…

TBH, letting go of your goals is one of the hardest and most important things to do as an adult.

Wonderful Christmas moment. Much better than when Julian Fellowes killed off Matthew. Martin Freeman is a great actor, and he had amazing chemistry with Lucy Davis (forever primarily known to me as Jasper Carrott’s daughter).

They are not incredibly wealthy. They are supported by funds (the Duchy of Cornwall) which belong to the state. William has about £10m in private wealth (inherited from Diana) which would keep them for about 2 years at their present rates of expenditure. Celebrities in the US do not receive their income from state…

This. All of this. And also, the Duchy of Cornwall does not belong to Charles, and the Duchy of Lancaster does not belong to the Queen. They are private Estates, yes, but they were set up for the benefit of the Prince of Wales and the Monarch respectively. They belong to the Crown (or, in other words, the state) with…

Here they are, in all their glory: https://www.comparethemarket.com/meerkat/meet-the-meerkats/

They’re meant to be Russian. The head meerkat is called Aleksandr Orlov.

As a foreigner, it seems to me that the first thing you need to fix is single payer health insurance. Other rich countries have similar issues with poverty, but none (apart from Mexico) approach your maternal death rate.

You seemed to indicate that Farrell was included in your searches of “fortysomething British actors.” But I now realise that another reading is possible.

Farrell is Irish, not British.

She was probably the best of people who looked like they could conceivably be the child of Heughan and Balfe.

Yeah, those are the rules. They can cast American actors for main roles if they would like, but in order to get those UK tax credits, they have to follow UK union rules, which means casting UK actors for minor roles.

I think she spends so much energy working on the American accent that there’s not much left over for acting. Brianna is a main character, so I’m not sure why UK union rules would require casting of a UK actor.

I’m very disappointed to hear that. Hannah James is a much, much better actor than Sophie Skelton.