Organisers have said that next year’s Platinum Jubilee celebration will be the biggest ever put on, even topping events held in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s diamond milestone.
Victoria & Albert Museum chairman Nicholas Coleridge, who is co-chairing the celebration, said 6,600 performers will take part in the closing day of celebrations in June.
He added that the BBC predicts that the jubilee celebrations, marking the Queen’s 70 years on the throne, could attract a global audience of one billion.
Nicholas Coleridge said that celebrations over the prolonged Bank Holiday weekend from Thursday, June 2 to Sunday, June 5 will include the Trooping The Colour, a great lunch led by the Lord Mayor of London, the Queen lighting bonfires and a BBC concert.
Talking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Nicholas Coleridge centred on what the celebration, with a budget of between £10 million and £15 million, will involve.
He said that it was going to be the largest that’s ever been put on, larger they believe than that was put on for Queen Victoria in 1897, and he said that was pretty big, but this one was going to be larger, and that it was going to have 6,500 people taking part in it.
Nicholas Coleridge said he hopes the pageant will attempt to cheer up the people following the COVID pandemic, and he added that at the same time, they were going to make sure that whilst the Jubilee was based in London, and the procession was going to go around the parks, through Westminster, under Admiralty Arch, down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace, and up past Constitution Hill, it’s not going to be London-centric.
He went on and said that even though they have an enormous map, making sure that they have people from every part of the country and certainly every part of the Commonwealth, and that they were going to have people from all 54 Commonwealth countries who were going to be taking part in this astounding parade.
And that they were going to have all the creative industries in it, and that 17 different theatre groups have so far signed up to be in it, and that they were having huge sculptures the size of four-storey houses being pulled down the Mall, and that they were having a mysterious celebrity singer, and that if he said who it was, the entire Team Jubilee would be so annoyed with him and that he would probably never be able to go back into the office.
However, isn’t this a tad overkill? Because sometimes, less is more. And let’s hope that there’s not another variant that mysteriously turns up, pushing us into lockdown again because then, it will be like throwing money down the drain on an old woman, and let’s face it, she’s got to make it until June.
Oh, and it will be great for the environment with 54 Commonwealth countries flying in and loads of carbon emissions, and it’s going to cost millions of taxpayers money, although I guess people need some joy after all the COVID suffering. Still, I won’t be watching it, as there are better things to do like mowing the grass or cleaning out the cat tray.
And I could think of far better ways to spend taxpayers money on, than dragging sculptures down the Mall.
A Thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey, Trooping The Colour, a garden party, fireworks and lighting beacons across the country should be enough.
It is the time for a celebration, but keep in mind that the Queen is an old lady who might not have the endurance she once had to be involved.
