Mrs Brown
‘NEVER wear brown in town is an axiom we have lived by for years.
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| ‘Earn, as in ows te addle is brass?’ (Trans: And what do you do?) |
So we are shocked to read the Stars story that Her Majesty has been spotted wearing a brown hat in York.
Royal Ascot, with its colourful horses and liveried chinless wonders has decamped to York racecourse for the season while the traditional venue in darkest Berkshire is modernised.
But not just the venue is altered, and today we are affronted by the site of the Queen wearing the most proletariat colour this side of shell-suit khaki.
We respect her ambition to look at home in the Northern wilds of her realm but there is no more need to change her unique sense of style than there is for her to go equipped to Yorkshire with a whippet, a tin of Yorkshire tea and Geoff Boycott.
But the controversy sparked by the Queens attire does not end there, and we read in the Mail that the headgear has fallen foul of bookmakers.
In itself, its not unusual for punters to place bets on what colour titfer the Queen will wear on Ladies Day.
This year, she has, as weve noted with a heavy heart, worn brown, and bookmakers believe her intention was leaked before the big unveiling.
Instead of the normal £20 or £20 bets, a string of what the paper calls mystery men attempted to place large sums at the bookies. When this happened, the turf accountants closed their books.
Obviously someone was in the know, says Paul Meehan, a manager at Paddy Power bookmakers. Obviously, indeed.
For who in their right mind would ever suppose the Queen was going to wear brown which has mutated to a less life-as-we-know-it-threatening coffee-coloured in the Mail?
The opening odds of 12-1 on brown were tempting, but the gamblers must have been in the know to attempt to place such big bets. But who blabbed?
While the Queen takes out Ye Olde Royal Thumbscrews, opens Traitors Gate and sets to work finding the informant, the Mail gives her a clue.
A spokesman for William Hill says the bookmakers branch in Windsor was approached by a would-be punter who wanted to place a £1,000 bet on the Queens hat being brown.
At about the same hour, a man walked into the Chelsea branch of Paddy Power, not a million miles away from Buckingham Palace, and tried without success to lay a £2,000 on the same.
Suspicions reached a head when a man with a posh accent tried to place £4,000 on the brown hat in West Ealing.
So were looking for a well-spoken man, who knows his way around Windsor and Chelsea, who has access to large sums of cash and to the Queens wardrobe.
Any ideas, dear readers? Its all Greek to us…’
Posted: 17th, June 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
