These English are crazy

I watched The Madness of King George last night. Good film. Funny. But what really struck me was how utterly obvious it was that a monarch should go mad. I mean, they refer to themselves as 'we'. Nobody looks them in the eye. They never seem to see anyone's back, cos everyone backs suspiciously out of their presence. You've got paranoid schizophrenia right there, surely? And then there's the whole 'God's anointed' thing, which don't get me started. The whole institution is self-evidently nuts. Maybe these days protocol is slightly relaxed, I don't know, I don't begin to understand the very concept of having a royal family that you take at all seriously. Maybe the modern royals are more sane; I don't know, I think there are a few questions there at least.

But consider this: a colleague of mine was quite unable to wrap her head around the idea of not having a monarchy. How can you have Christmas without it, she wanted to know. Who gives the Queen's Speech?

It's not just the monarchs, then. It's the whole bloody country.