Mohamed Al Fayed

[Marina]

:

Al Fayed is a brilliantly absolutely ******* barking mad mentalist. He'd be great on here (maybe he already is?).

He's completely beserk - Yesterday there was a clip of him leaving the court and rounding on some inoffensive BBC reporter. He launched into a torrent of abuse and invective, calling the reporter an idiot, and then accused _him_ of working for MI6

[TheFaQQer]

I heard (or maybe read) something recently that it is not automatic that he would take the title "King Charles III", he is more likely to take the title "King Arthur" or "King George".

Someone else can fill us in with which numbers those would be, I didn't do history at school.

George VII / Arthur I

And you're right - King George VI was christened Albert, since he wasn't intended to become King. But he became George on coronation because Queen Victoria had said that there should never be a King Albert.

[TheFaQQer]

He's completely beserk - Yesterday there was a clip of him leaving the court and rounding on some inoffensive BBC reporter. He launched into a torrent of abuse and invective, calling the reporter an idiot, and then accused _him_ of working for MI6

Michael Buerk - of whom Prince Charles once said "I can't stand that man..." which was caught on camera.

[Marina]

Kind of funny when you think about it - when it comes around to Williams turn he'll be the closest thing to a genuine English king for several hundred (A thousand?) years; they only started speaking English as their first language relatively recently.

Henry IV spoke English, although the Wikipedia article doesn't say whether it was his first language.

Henry's coronation, on 13 October 1399, is notable as the first time following the Norman Conquest that the monarch made an address in English.

[TheFaQQer]

He obviously has no sense whatever of the history of the English monarchy...

They've spent centuries offing each other...

And a mad Egyptian Grocer ain't going to make much difference.

But they used to do it with some degree of certainty, e.g. poison, locking in a tower, beheading...

The idea that the best that the monarchy, MI5, MI6, CIA, the IRA, the PCG etc. etc. could put together was to hope that she didn't have a seatbelt on and cause a crash seems a tad unlikely to me.

[IR35 Avoider]

If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it" - at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting.

My wife is chinese, and she would agree with that. Anything the human body is capable of digesting, the chinese will have a recipe for.

To be serious for a moment, given how many millions starved to death under Mao, it's hardly surprising is it?

[snaw]

Henry IV spoke English, although the Wikipedia article doesn't say whether it was his first language.

Can't find any specific references but from memory from the Norman conquest on French was the language of the nobility, until we replaced them with some Germans (Queen Victoria and her family spoke German at home).

I think (Could be wrong) that Diana is the fist English mother of an English prince for quite some time.

Guess my point is that what we consider the most English of things, the royalty (Scotland was more or less the same), is in fact probably one of the least English institutions.

[TheFaQQer]

Can't find any specific references but from memory from the Norman conquest on French was the language of the nobility, until we replaced them with some Germans (Queen Victoria and her family spoke German at home).

I think (Could be wrong) that Diana is the fist English mother of an English prince for quite some time.

Guess my point is that what we consider the most English of things, the royalty (Scotland was more or less the same), is in fact probably one of the least English institutions.

Diana was the first English mother of an English prince since HRH Queen Elizabeth II gave birth to Prince Edward in 1964, so a gap of 18 years.

[snaw]

Diana was the first English mother of an English prince since HRH Queen Elizabeth II gave birth to Prince Edward in 1964, so a gap of 18 years.

OK, you got me - his dad wasn't though. I should have been more specific, Diana is the first spouse of an English monarch to be English for quite a while, and one of a very small percentage generally. My overall point still stands, they're not a very English institution when you get even a little granular.

[shaunbhoy]

they're not a very English institution when you get even a little granular.

Heads are too square for one thing.

HTH