Let us begin with a visit to the old jokes’ home.
Q: How do you know if someone’s a vegan?
A: They tell you.
This gag was, admittedly, never in the premier league but, in its favour, it has adaptability. You may refresh it simply by replacing vegan with whichever zealot you wish to mock.
So, how do you know if someone’s a republican? You are, I’m sure, way ahead of me.
As we count down to Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III, it hasn’t been difficult to find people eager to explain why they are so furiously opposed to monarchy.
In real life, across social media, and – of course – on the comment pages of newspapers, we find an abundance of self-righteous anti-royalists.
They sneer at those who take pleasure from the wonderfully absurd spectacle of major royal occasions. They proudly proclaim that they will bend the knee to nobody, as if everyone else is walking about in a constant state of deference.
They rage that the royal family symbolises all that is unfair across these lands; if only we’d abolish the whole damned lot of them, we’d put an end to inequality. Just like they’ve done in, er, the USA…
As a teenager, I was fiercely – or, more accurately – self-consciously and performatively opposed to the royals. Only knee-bending idiots and fans of brutal inequality could have disagreed with my opposition.
These days? Well, these days, I’m entirely relaxed about the whole thing. The monarchy is a strange, illogical institution, all arcane rules and bizarre rituals. All of this gives it some appeal.
Abolishing the monarchy wouldn’t automatically improve anyone’s life
If I thought abolishing the monarchy would actually improve the lives of the poorest in this country, then I’d be fully in favour. I may be thrawn, but I’m not a sadist.
But, doing away with the royal family would bring no material benefit to anyone. Rather, it would simply upset the eccentrics and harmless traditionalists who get pleasure from their existence.
The more loudly and fiercely opposed someone is to the monarchy, the more my support for its existence grows. This is childish and petty, I know, but then I’ve never claimed to be anything else.
I’m rather looking forward to watching the coronation. It will, I’m sure, be quite the show.
It will also, I predict, provoke an emotional response entirely unconnected to my own ambivalence about the royals. It will make me think of my late and much missed grandparents, to whom the monarchy meant a great deal.
I plan to drink in every minute of this historic occasion. What harm can that do?
Three cheers for the King, and for the souvenir tins of shortbread I’m going to empty as events unfold.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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