- Sun Mar 31, 2002 6:46 pm
#7479
Okay folks, here's how it's gonna be.
Saturday: The Queen Mother dies, the second most tragic event of this terrible Saturday (Ipswich losing at West Ham being the biggest catastrophe). Her death is not in vain, however; millions of BBC viewers were spared from Jim Davidson's Generation Game.
Sunday: Tributes continue to pour in for the Queen Mother. That Will Young bloke makes a public announcement, saying: "Yeah, she was a really nice old lady. I like old ladies, me. Oh, and my single Evergreen is in the shops now, and I think everybody should buy it out of respect for the Queen Mother." Nobody does.
Monday:BBC2's "I Love The Queen Mum" goes head-to-head in the ratings war with Channel 4's "Top Ten Queen Mothers", which featured our Queen Mum at every single position in the top 10. Stuart Maconie is double-booked; Johnny Vegas is forced to stand in for him on the BBC show.
Tuesday:With no official day of mourning having been declared, nobody returns to work after the Bank Holiday because they're "just too depressed". The entire country grinds to a halt as essential services are left without staff. Tony Blair is forced to summon an emergency meeting of atheists and anti-monarchists to keep Britain working.
Wednesday: The country remains broken. Essential services like food, petrol and electricity begin to run out, but nobody complains because "that's not what the Queen Mum would have wanted".
Thursday: Will Young releases a hastily-composed charity single for the Queen Mum: a cover of Gareth Gates' cover of "Unchained Melody". The public (i.e pre-pubescent girls) get confused and die.
Friday: Jenny Bond collapses with exhaustion after having been on our screens for 150 hours non-stop in her frumpy black outfit, saying things like "it's the children that are going to suffer" and "she was like a grandmother to us all".
Saturday: The entire population of Great Britain crowds into London to line the streets for the Queen Mum's funeral, thereby preventing any chance I have of catching the train back from Cambridge to Southampton via the Tube.
Still, the funeral goes ahead as planned. In an attempt to secure the Queen Mum's permanent god-like status, her coffin is blasted into the upper layers of the atmosphere, where it is detonated into a squillion pieces, so that "it's like she's everywhere in the world at the same time". The BBC end the day with a special royal edition of The Weakest Link, before closing with Anne Robinson's rendition of the national anthem against a Union Jack backdrop.
Sunday: Life goes on.
dave benson phillips