The British Crown Affair
Sir Charles Grandiose, Princess Diana, and
the End of the Word As We Know Itby Vance Briceland
My secret goal in life is to be a stand-up comedian. My fingers twitch excitedly whenever I see a notice in the paper advertising an open mike night. I long to hear hundreds of voices laughing because I've regaled them with a droll story about my experiences. Feedback from a funny story is instant gratification. You know right away whether or not you've hit the target. If you fail, you get another chance, right then. None of this writing essays and hoping that someone, somewhere, sometime down the road will read them and crack a smile. Nosirree!
I call stand-up comedy my secret goal because I'm regularly rewarded with hoots of astonished laughter whenever I confess it to friends. Never mind that I can keep them howling with laughter for long minutes while I tell them stories. Never mind that I'm the only person I know who actually enjoys public speaking. Apparently my outward demeanor is so mild and unassuming that I'm the Clark Kent of comedy. Despite my unmistakable resemblance to the funny guy who looks and talks exactly like me (using my body, mind you), no one's yet associated the two of us.
Now, the last thing anyone wants to hear from a funny guy is how difficult it is to be comical with any consistency. I will admit that many of my ideas for "Advice From Sir Charles Grandiose' just waft in from nowhere. For example, a walk by a local restaurant where several of the patrons were conversing in French gave me the idea for "Sir Charles Grandiose Presents All The French You Ever Really Need Know." The baronet's rants against millennialism and American politics and other touchy subjects usually tend to be my own vitriol spread thinly with the clotted cream of the English countryside. And many of my favorite columns tend to be bizarre ideas I've just woken up with--the J. Patermen Catalogue comes to mind.
Given that so many of my Grandiose fancies come so easily, I'll skip over the occasional agonized weekends I've spent completely dry of any ideas to feed to the baronet. I'll also omit mentions of my frantic re-readings at the last minute, when I'm convinced his jokes aren't snappy enough for most readers, or that they're too obscure, or that people just won't understand them.
I touch on these things only briefly, because what has pleased me most about my association with Sir Charles Grandiose is that there are so very many people who seem to get it. A few thousand people a week understand the central conceit of a man so pleased with his title and his possessions that he fails to recognize his own vices and ignorance. Even better, a goodly portion of those readers take the time to write in letters especially designed to appeal to his overweening vanity and cultured stupidity. And every time I get a letter that makes me helpless with laughter, to me it's a little like the sound of applause at the end of a stand-up set. People got it.
I lived with this certainty until the time of the British Crown Affair. Since then, however, I've never really been the same.
I received my first email from the correspondent I'll call "Mr. Felt' in July of 1997.
July 19, 1997
Dear Sir Charles:
I just discovered your column and think it's great that a member of the aristocracy has his own web site! Do you know Princess Diana? If so I am the president of the Diana Appreciation Society headquartered in Biscayne, Michigan and I would be happy to ask you for an introduction to her. If you would give me the address of your gracious estate I would be glad to send you some photos of our group so that you can see we are regular people who love the princess and who do not want anything from her except some photographs and maybe some autographs. I understand that members of the House of Lords can have tea with royalty anytime you care to so meeting with the princess should be no problem. I personally would like an autograph for my wife Velma on her special pillowcase of celebrity autographs if that is all right, but the princess might just give her autographs on paper. Is there a chance we could have tea with you and her too? We will be coming to your country in November. Thank you thank you thank you!
Sincerely,
Mr. Felt.
I usually tend to avoid giving Sir Charles certain types of requests; if a letter seems too genuine, I'll give it a pass. Unless, of course, Sir Charles can rip into it mercilessly. I'll never pass up an opportunity for a cheap joke at someone's expense. But curiosity prompted me to see if there was indeed a Mr. Felt in Biscayne, Michigan, and I found him listed in an internet phone directory at the address he had plastered three times at the bottom of his email. Rather than expose poor Velma and her special pillowcase of celebrity autographs to the ridicule of the hundreds of Biscayne residents who no doubt read "Advice from Sir Charles Grandiose,' I gently ignored the letter.
Unfortunately he sent another.
July 28 1997
Dear Sir Charles Grandiose,
It has been one week and I have not received a confirmation from you for our lunch or luncheon with Princess Diana on Westminster Terrace. Is she not at the palace?
Please respond as soon as possible as our tickets are in November and we were hoping to have our itinerary complete by August so we could see Cats in London to compare it to the version in New York. It is a beautiful ballet that brings Velma (my wife) to tears.
Is your accent as beautiful as hers?
Sincerely,
Mr. Felt
P.S. I meant is your accent as beautiful as Princess Diana's, not Velma's. She's from Cheboygan.
Poor Mr. Felt, I thought to myself as I filed away the email in the "Not For Use' box. It's a perdition that no soul should have to bear, seeing Cats twice.
Because I was still gestating when President Kennedy was assassinated, I can only participate in two of the "Where were you when. . . .?" questions that come around once a generation. I remember quite well where I was when the shuttle Challenger exploded (in a drugstore, flirting wildly--and, I thought, rather successfully--with a cute clerk, while the radio blared in the background). And it is with even more clarity that I recall being surrounded by dozens of tearful Canadians in a sports bar the night that Princess Diana died in Paris.
We were vacationing in Toronto with our friend Lydia, and had just come back from seeing the penultimate performance of the musical Ragtime. The televisions in the Sheraton's bar were just reporting the news when we walked in. The mood there turned funereal. We watched the news reports, drank our drinks, and then returned to our rooms to watch more of the continuing news coverage, until finally we fell asleep, too weary to absorb any more.
What amazed me about the event, however, was that people started to send letters of condolence to Sir Charles within about six hours of Princess Diana's death; several people hoped he was holding up under the strain, and others asked him to pass their sympathies on to the Queen for them. I've been accused of overanalyzing things before, but these letters had me bemused. Were the notes serious? Did people actually think there was a baronet writing the column? Or were people playing the game, and pretending to write letters to a non-existent construct in order to convey their all-too-real sorrow?
At any rate, I expected it all to go away when the media frenzy died down. However, I hadn't counted on Mr. Felt.
September 8 1997
Dear Sir Charles,
I am sure you are as outraged as I am about the conspiracy surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Velma (my wife) has been in tears ever since the "accident.' But you and I both know that it was no accident Sir Charles. Sir Charles, please contact Parliament immediately and have them investigate the death of the people's princess. This is a matter of vital urgency!
Sincerely,
Mr. Felt
And then:
September 16, 1997
Dear Sir Charles,
I have not heard from you regarding the investigation of the death of Princess Diana by Parliament so I must assume that you are under a gag order by the royal family! But Sir Charles, I have made some startling discoveries. The red dragon that is the sign of Wales--and Charles is the Prince of Wales!--is closely described in the Book of Revelations, chapter 12. "And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth." This only lends credence to my view that Princess Diana was pregnant by Dodi Fayed and that this "accident' was a conspiracy designed to "devour the child' before it could be born!
Velma (my wife) also has noticed that if you look at the Lion, the symbol of Britain, that it has a slim body like a leopard and feet like bear's claws! This is exactly as foretold in the Book of Revelations, Chapter 13! "And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed the beast with wonder."
I don't know if Prince Charles had a riding accident or not but that would account for a wound on his head!
Please Sir Charles, if you are in trouble let me know.
Sincerely,
Mr. Felt
September 24, 1997
Dear Sir Charles,
Still no word from you. I must assume the worst.
The conspiracy widens.
I have discovered a startling proof. Computers "crunch' numbers. You must realize that every letter on a computer is stored as a number. These are known as ASCII numbers. Look at the following.
E=69
L=76
I=73
Z=90
A=65
B=66
E=69
T=84
H=72
69 + 76 + 73 + 90 + 65 + 66 + 69 + 84 + 72 + 2 = 664 !
Are you still with me? Well, what is Queen Elizabeth's title? It's Queen Elizabeth II. And 664 plus 2 equals 666!!!
Revelations 13: "let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six."
Sir Charles, Velma (my wife) and I feel you are in grave danger in the British Crown Affair. Buckingham Palace is obviously sitting at the maws of Hell.
Sincerely,
Mr. Felt.
Everyone's always telling me that hindsight gives you the sort of vision that enables Clark Kent to spy a particularly lovely sprig of edelweiss while flying three thousand feet over the tippy top of the Alps. Two years after the British Crown Affair, I keep asking myself why I didn't just write Mr. Felt a nice little letter explaining that Sir Charles Grandiose simply wasn't a real person who could address his concerns. I might even have explained that even if Sir Charles wasn't a fictional construct, a baronet doesn't sit in Parliament, nor would he likely have immediate access to the Windsors.
At the time, however, I was uncertain whether or not Mr. Felt was playing some elaborate joke on me. The allegations of the letters were comical, to my eye. Queen Elizabeth as the Beast of the Apocalypse? I've seen plastic-wrapped slices of American Cheese with more malevolent intent. But at the same time, the charges had enough lunatic conviction that I sensed Mr. Felt and Velma (his wife) might believe they were true.
Most of all, though, I don't like having to explain jokes to those who don't get it. And the affair of Sir Charles and the British Crown Affair was the first time I'd ever been confronted with a reader who so thoroughly failed to get it.
October 3, 1997
Dear Sir Charles,
Your continued silence indicates to me that you are in distress. You continue to write your column but you do not respond to me. Please give us a signal, Sir Charles, that you are have not been swallowed by the Beast. If you require assistance please start your next column with the word "help'. I will know what it means.
Have you seen the Queen Mother? Have you noticed how stiff and unnatural her motions are? My suspicion is that with the recent opening of EuroDisney on the "Continent' that she may have been replaced by an animatronic figure. Modern science is being used as a tool of the Antichrist, Sir Charles!
With concern!
Mr. Felt
October 12, 1997
Dear Sir Charles,
I have done some research and find that grandiose.com is registered to someone in Michigan. Since Velma (my wife) and I are in Biscayne Michigan we are planning to visit this Mr. Briceling in Detroit even though we are not fond of crack houses. Our tolerance of drug users is low since we once had a son who sniffed glue when he was putting together model cars, and especially since we suspect that someone is giving Prince Charles heroin to distribute to the young princes. He learned his lesson (our son)!
We will assume that is what you wish us to do unless we hear from you. We are worried for your safety!
With continued concern!
Mr. Felt
Obviously something had to be done.
Those near and dear to me insisted I should write Mr. Felt a letter as myself and carefully explain that Sir Charles Grandiose was a fictional character, and as such, was helpless to consider Mr. Felt's well-intentioned pleas. "Just tell the truth!" they would cry. Yet I couldn't bring myself to do it. Sir Charles seemed so real to this man that there was no way I could force myself to grab his empty little wooly head and pull the fleece back from his eyes. I'd feel like Simon LeGree, loosing the hounds on innocent Little Eva.
The prospect of a visit from Mr. Felt and Velma (his wife), however, was enough to prompt me to action. The last thing I needed was for two conspiracy theorists tracking me down in my home. I began to have haunting premonitions of them bursting in upon me while I was watching the umpteenth rerun of Showgirls on HBO, armed to the teeth, only to force me out into the street and beg for my life wearing nothing but a pair of dirty boxer shorts and a pair of mismatched argyle socks. And then everyone would know that I was a secret fan of Showgirls! (For the record, the crack house is next door, thank you very much.)
So I wrote Mr. Felt a little letter.
October 13, 1997
Dear Mr. Felt,
Don't bother with Mr. Briceling. The dolt knows nothing of the conspiracy.
Oneself is the mastermind behind the British Crown Affair. And now you and Velma (your wife) know too much. One trusts you won't put up too much of a fuss, when the minions of one's Lord and Master of Eternal Pain and Darkness pay your trailer park a little social visit.
Please address all future correspondence to one's new address at 666 Hellspright Way, London. Many thanks.
With bestial regards,
Sir Charles Grandiose
As I said, I hate having to explain jokes. And one never heard from Mr. Felt again.
It's a compliment, really, to create a character whom others find so rich and compelling and realistic that they . . . . Oh, I can't keep deluding myself. That kind of self-flattery isn't true at all, though it's pretty to think so. One paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy nut and his wife (Velma) who are convinced that winged serpents fly out the fundament of the woman gracing the Canadian twenty dollar bill and that a randy baronet is the world's only help for salvation, does not a strong literary character make.
If it were to happen twice, though. . . .
--Vance Briceland
Composed in commemoration of two hundred
columns of "Advice from Sir Charles Grandiose', September, 1999
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