That’s it. I’m not putting teeth under my pillow any more

It’s enough to make me lose faith in fairies.

The Rugby World Cup’s been a strangely unsatisfactory competition, especially from the point of view of anyone English. Despite the tournament being held here, England failed even to get out of the pool stage and into the quarter finals. I’m always pleased when an English team sets a new record, but I wish it hadn’t become the first ever host nation to fail to qualify.

Still, one could as an Englishman switch one’s allegiance to one of the other Northern Hemisphere teams. Four of them had made it into the quarters, along with with four from the South: France, Ireland, Wales and Scotland joined Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.

Of the four Southern teams, Argentina looked the weakest. It has been steadily improving for a couple of decades, but it’s only recently made it to the big time. On the other hand, among the European teams, the one that has performed the best in the last year or two was Ireland, which won the premier competition here, the Six Nations, in both 2014 and 2015.

As it happened, Ireland was playing Argentina, so that looked like about our best bet for getting one Northern team through to the semis.

South Africa looked vulnerable, beaten in their first match by Japan, a nation which looks like Argentina a decade or so ago: improving but still not a major side. Wales, one of the stronger European sides, might just beat them.

As for New Zealand and Australia, their performance had been spectacular throughout the competition. There was little chance of off-colour France beating the former, or Scotland, near the bottom of the Six Nations, beating the latter.

So what happened?

South Africa avoided the mistakes that cost them against Japan, and beat Wales.

New Zealand did a demolition job on the French, leaving them bloodied and bowed.

That took us to Ireland-Argentina, our best chance. Within thirteen minutes, Argentina were 17-0 up. Ireland fought back, but were well beaten in the end.

The only hope left was for Scotland to beat Australia. But Scotland is one of the weakest of the Six Nations. Australia have been magnificent throughout this tournament. Surely only a miracle could give Scotland the victory.

A miracle or a fairy tale. One of those great sports stories, beloved of Hollywood, where the unfavoured underdogs come good on the day and beat their fancied, powerful opponents.

Well, it nearly happened. With three minutes to go, Scotland was two points up. Then Australia was awarded a penalty, worth three points if successful. Which it was. So in the end Australia went through by a single point.

Scotland came so close to beating Australia
And making a fairy tale come true...

The fairy tale was not to be. 

It’s enough to shake my belief in the Walt Disney World. It’s enough to cast doubt on the existence of Father Christmas, even if you call him Santa Claus.

Anyway, the result is that we go into the last two weekends of the Rugby World Cup with not just the host nation eliminated, but the host hemisphere. The English often complain that we invent sports for the rest of the world to beat us: football (what everyone but the US call football, anyway), cricket, now rugby.

Indeed, as far as rugby’s concerned, it isn’t just the country of its invention that disappoints, it’s the whole continent.

A fairy tale with a touch of reality: not sparing the rod, to make the Prince

Remember all those fairy tales we’d hear as children, with their courageous, handsome princes, who’d suffer a bit (perhaps living as a frog for a while) before everything worked out just fine?

It strikes me that adults ought to be able to cope with truer tales of princes and their changing fortunes. I happen to have one right here. I hope you enjoy it.

Once upon a time, there lived a Prince whose father never went to war, but was still called “the soldier King.” That was because he’d built a wonderful army that could have defeated the forces of any of his neighbours, had he ever used it. But he didn’t.

One day, the King told his son, “I want you to be a fine soldier too. You’re going to learn to be strong and courageous and lead other soldiers.”

So he gave him a good beating in front of the courtiers, because he’d let himself be thrown from a bolting horse, or had put on gloves on a cold day, or whatever.

Like so many fathers, the King also gave his son toys to play with. Toy soldiers. Only these were alive – children, like the Prince, a whole regiment for him to train.

Sadly, the Prince had certain behaviour traits that the King his father didn’t particularly like. He regarded them as “effeminate.” To help his son overcome such terrible drawbacks, he would beat him from time to time or point out what a girl he was, to the other courtiers.

When he was eighteen, and a proper soldier in the grown-up army, the Prince met another officer, nine years older, he could get really close to. They used to write poetry and play the flute together. In fact, they got so close that one day the Prince told him he couldn’t stand life at court any more and intended to run away to another country where his uncle was King. At first, his friend begged him not to, but when he realised that there was no way of talking him out of his plan, he went along with it.

Unfortunately, the plan was betrayed and the young men were arrested. As officers, they had to face courts martial. The court refused to judge the Prince, saying it didn’t have the authority, but it sentenced his friend to life imprisonment for desertion.

“Prison? Not good enough,” bellowed the King, “chop off his head.”

"Off with his head," cried the King

So they did, and the Prince had to watch until he fainted. When he emerged from three days of despair, the King put him in gaol for a few months, but decided he didn’t need to suffer severe punishment – perhaps I should say further severe punishment – so exiled him to a castle in a cold northern region. That suited the Prince, who collected a nice library, and lots of friends (all men). He started writing, poetry and philosophy, and made friends with the greatest poet of the time, who was also a philosopher.

He wrote a great book about how a ruler should be honest and virtuous, and not at all like the nasty Kings of the past. One can guess that they included his father.

Then his dad finally died, and the young Prince took the throne himself. It was a wonderful moment. At last, a philosopher would be King, and rule for the good of humanity, cultivating the arts and the sciences, and building a land of peace, plenty and pleasure.

Alas, it was not to be.

He wrote at once to his friend, the philosopher. 

“You know that book about how rulers should be virtuous? Could you please make sure it doesn’t get published after all?”

Sadly, it was too late to stop it appearing.

In the same letter, the Prince, who was now King, also mentioned that he was adding a few more battalions to his father’s wonderful and unused army. And then – he used it. When a woman came to the throne of the next door country, he decided that would lead to so much dissension that he could nip in and take one of her juiciest provinces. So he did.

But he kept the flute going and the poetry. And had fun with his friends (all men). His dad had made him marry, but he left his wife in the capital to run the official court (which she did rather well), while he went to a nice palace he’d built some miles away and enjoyed himself with his own court of like-minded friends.

The philosopher came too, but he was a rather important man himself and didn’t like dancing to the King’s tune. So in time he ran away, and was arrested by the King, just like the King had been arrested when he was a Prince. At least the philosopher wasn’t executed. After some uncomfortable weeks, he was allowed to leave.

The other friends discovered they could enjoy themselves splendidly, just as long as they enjoyed doing exactly what the King wanted. Though some of the time he wasn’t there, as he became highly effective at killing lots of his enemies, using the army built by his father the Soldier King, who never soldiered. The son proved rather good at soldiering, much to the annoyance of his neighbours.

A fine tale, isn’t it? And sadly rather more real than the ones we listened to as kids.

The Soldier King was Frederick William I of Prussia. His son was Frederick II, who after his first war decided he’d like to be called “the Great”, so of course he was. The decapitated officer was Hans Hermann von Katte. The uncle was George I of England. The deserted wife was Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern. She stayed in Berlin while Frederick lived in his palace of Sans Souci (“No worries”) in Potsdam. The philosopher and poet was Voltaire. Maria Theresa was the Empress of Austria who lost Silesia to Frederick.

History doesn’t record whether many of them lived happily ever after.

Fritz der Große playing the flute

Endings

The first time I heard of Ignrid Pitt, once a Hammer horror star, was when I came across her obituaries this week.

In a radio programme, I heard her daughter talking about Pitt’s attributes, apparently her hair and her ‘bosoms’, a word she kept repeating. This seemed to be her delicate way of suggesting her mother wouldn’t have fitted into a small-size bra. Having checked the photos, I think this is probably true.

Ingrid Pitt: attributes that could hardly be missed

Pitt had an extraordinary biography: she was in a concentration camp during the war, with her Jewish mother, but they both survived. After the war, she worked with the world-famous Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin. But she fell out with the East German authorities and fled to the West by attempting to swim across the River Spree. She underestimated the current and was swept away. Fortunately a US solder was out on a boat on the river, saw her and fished her out of the water.

Knowing what one does about soldiers, it’s not hard to imagine the effect on one of rescuing a young woman from a river. Especially one with capacious ‘bosoms’ whose clothes were wet. He must have thought he’d gone to heaven without even having to die.

And indeed it didn’t take long for them to be married. The daughter I heard on the radio was the fruit of that encounter on the Spree.

A real fairy tale ending, wouldn’t you say? Well, yes. Except that actually the marriage didn’t take. A couple formed in such romantic circumstances separated in the divorce court.

That got me thinking about ‘real fairy tale endings’. Though I’m not sure it’s entirely true, I’m prepared for the purposes of argument to accept the received view that young children should be given a vision of the world as a wonderful place where people really can live happily ever after. However, there must come a time – perhaps at eight, perhaps at ten – when a child needs to start to learn what the world is really like. For kids that age, we need endings which actually show what is really likely to happen next.

It might also be an improvement if the stories themselves dealt in more realistic terms with the impact of apparently extraneous considerations such as ‘bosom’ size.

Here then is a first sample of what I see as a ‘real fairy tale ending’, where ‘real’ actually means ‘reflecting reality’. In place of ‘and they all lived happily ever after’, my modest proposal is an article from The Fairyland Examiner, a tabloid handed out free at station exits and supermarket checkouts throughout the land where tales are set. This is from some eight years after the marriage that concludes the traditional version.

Who’s Charming who?

Is it over for fairytale couple?

‘She’s always talking to the birds,’ claims former Prince

‘He’s always shooting birds,’ counters estranged wife and bird protection specialist.

From our own correspondents Ronald O’Sleaze and Jemima Gutta

Following the publication of photos of former Prince Charming leaving a Biarritz hotel with Lola Luvalot, Lady Apoplectic (see pages 4,5, 8, 10 and 11), questions are being asked about how long his marriage can last.

‘Just who is he being Charming to?’ asked long-suffering wife and former scullery maid, Cinderella, Lady Charming, 25.

Lady Charming rose to prominence following her shock win in the ‘Royal Ballroom Dancing’ competition eight years ago. She astonished judges and voters alike by dancing throughout the evening in crystal slippers. Since then, injuries sustained by hopefuls trying to use similar footwear has led to its being banned by a government obsessed with so-called health and safety.

In particular, Cinderella beat early favourite Luvalot, 32, known for her skills as an exotic dancer. Luvalot's chances were spoiled when a too-tight top burst revealing that she must have been using padded bras, to produce the effect that accounted for much of her early hopes of success.

As shown by photos published by this paper on page 3 some days after the competition, Cinderella suffered from no such shortcomings. Her feet were by no means her only remarkable feat. No glass was needed to appreciate her other attributes

Illicit romance never ended

The Biarritz photos seem to confirm persistent rumours that the romance between the former Prince, 35, and his old flame Luvalot had continued despite his marriage to Cinderella. Curvaceous Luvalot, who became Lady Apoplectic on her own marriage to a husband (57) now said to be living up to his name, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The former Prince, who has been living in straitened circumstance since the collapse of the monarchy, following the national outcry over the King’s decision to run away to Patagonia with a sergeant from the Royal Guards, has remained equally tight lipped. However, a reliable source close to the Prince, told the Examiner ‘she seems to think that life consists of nothing but dancing at balls and talking to birds. The loss of his fortune, however, means that the Prince now needs real help, the kind of thing a former maid of all work ought to be able to provide.’

I won’t go back to cleaning grates

Meanwhile, Cinderella, as outspoken as ever, was not afraid to share her feelings with us. ‘If he was in love with that floozy all along, why didn’t he just marry her instead of leading me such a merry dance?’

Asked about the suggestion that she ought to be helping more around the house, she retorted:

‘You must be kidding. It took a lot of effort to win that competition and marry a Prince. It’s not my fault that he isn’t one any more. I mean, as well as my natural talents, I was helped by supporters who now expect me to live up to my victory. Take the birds: they handled so many of my household chores. And then, of course, my fairy godmother went to quite extraordinary lengths to help me get the result I deserved. I owe it to them as much as myself not to be forced back to the scullery now.’

The role of birds in supporting Cinderella is well-known. Would they not help again?

‘Not bloody likely. They feel they’ve given already. They now think that it’s up to me to give something back. I’m already honorary president of the National Society for Bird Protection, which has got to be about the most boring organisation anyone ever invented, but they want more, more, more. Meanwhile, my bloody husband goes out there shooting them which doesn’t exactly help my popularity either.’

End of the road?

The charm certainly seems to have gone out of the Charmings’ marriage. But does that mean it’s over?

For the moment, there’s no talk of divorce. But the Biarritz incident suggests that Lord Charming isn’t prepared to put an end to his old attachment.

The Examiner is clear. It’s time for him to come clean. If Lady Apoplectic is the real love of his life, then he owes it to his wife and to the people of this nation to say so. If that means divorce, we say so be it. Our readers will be only too pleased if Cinderella, a princess from the People, were given back her freedom and the chance to make a new start for herself.

The Examiner will be launching a fund to support our Princess. She deserves better than a husband who neglects her. A career in TV beckons, perhaps on one of the many channels owned by the Examiner’s own proprietors.

We say to Cinderella: leave that no-good waster. You know the love you’ve won from the people the Examiner is proud to represent. Count on us, not on those who don’t appreciate you. That’s the way to live happily ever after.

The Charmings have three children, aged eight, six and three. The former King is 68.


I suppose it would make a far less satisfactory ending to the story, something a lot harder to turn into a Christmas pantomime.

But it would be a much better preparation for the realities of adult life, wouldn’t it?