The Queen looks round the Chelsea Flower Show
The Queen visited the world famous Chelsea
Flower Show on Monday for a special preview
of the breathtaking gardens and blooms on
display.
Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, she
chatted to gardeners and horticulturists while
she toured the two new marquees.
Other royals to attend Monday's Gala Preview
on Monday were the Prince of Wales, the
Princess Royal, the Earl and Countess of
Wessex and Princess Margaret, who was in a
wheelchair.
Their arrival was deliberately low-key after last
year when they brought central London traffic
to a standstill as they breezed past fuming
motorists to the horticultural extravaganza.
With an estimated
£20m spent by
exhibitors on innovative
and eye-catching
displays, this year's
show promises to be a
riot of colour.
Everything from Italian
lakes and rock gardens
to more avant-garde
designs have been
created across 24
gardens for an
expected 170,000 visitors.
And many of the plants displayed will be
newly-cultivated variants which have never
been seen before.
Exhibits come from across the world - the
Horticultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago
has flown a vibrant display of tropical flowers
and fruit 4,000 miles to show.
Every exhibitor will be competing for a coveted
Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal.
Specialist societies,
including the National
Vegetable Society, the
National
Chrysanthemum Society
and the Historic Roses
Group, will get their
own marquee for the
first time.
Visitors are expected to get through 6,000
bottles of champagne, 2,000 lobsters, 70,000
ice creams, 60,000 cups of tea and more than
8,000 rounds of sandwiches during the show.
Attendance on Tuesday and Wednesday is
limited to RHS members but the show opens to
the public on Thursday and Friday.
~*~
Anger at BBC satire of Queen Mother
pageant(Electronic Telegraph)
By Sandra Laville
THE BBC reignited the row over its refusal to broadcast the Queen Mother's
100th birthday pageant by running a satirical item from outside Clarence
House yesterday.
Listeners to the Radio 4 current affairs programme Broadcasting House heard
Eddie Mair, its presenter, announce that it would be running live coverage of
the Queen Mother being 99. At intervals, a reporter came on air to announce
that there was not much happening at Clarence House, not even a curtain
twitching.
As he handed back to Mair, the presenter said: "We'll be going back to live
coverage of the Queen Mother being 99 later." A spokesman for the BBC
said it had received some complaints but "most listeners understood it was a
joke at the media's expense".
Gerald Kaufman, chairman of the Commons Culture Committee, was not
amused. He said nothing surprised him any more about the BBC. He said:
"They have lost the plot." Peter Ainsworth, the Tory culture spokesman, said:
"It is like sticking two fingers up to the Royal Family and to public opinion.
There are people around in the organisation who simply have lost what the
concept of a public service broadcaster is."
A spokesman for the Queen Mother said: "I was surprised that the BBC
should have put someone outside the gate without letting us know. As for
what I thought of the programme, well I am not going to say. I was quite glad
when someone went over to them and told them the Queen Mother was not
there, so there was no point in going on. It was a policeman I think."
The BBC spokesman said: "It was not any one single person's idea, I think it
came up in an ideas meeting earlier in the week." The decision to run the item
came after Jonathan Dimbleby, the broadcaster, made his criticism of the
corporation's decision on the centenary pageant public.
Dimbleby presents Radio 4's Any Questions and his brother David was the
commentator for the BBC's coverage of celebrations of the Queen Mother's
90th birthday. He said the BBC had misjudged the public mood. The
corporation, he said, was filled with "cool, young turks" who were likely to
find events such as the Queen Mother's pageant "embarrassing".
Despite substantial criticism and Prime Ministerial support for live coverage of
the pageant, the BBC has refused to reverse its decision not to broadcast the
event live on either BBC1 or BBC2. It believes that it is providing ample
coverage, with live broadcasts of a service of thanksgiving for the Queen
Mother and of the celebrations on Aug 4, her 100th birthday.
The pageant, on July 19, is to be broadcast on ITV, in a 75-minute
programme presented by Sir Trevor McDonald.
~*~
<,b>Holyrood high jinks raise royal profile(Electronic Telegraph)
By Robert Hardman
WANDERING among hundreds of Church of Scotland ministers and their
spouses at this weekend's royal garden party in Holyroodhouse was a large,
bald man in a peach dress and high heels.
Lining up for a few words with the Prince of Wales, one clergyman almost
choked on his fruit cake as a harmonica-blowing ballerina in a plastic tutu ran
through the crowds, pursued by a half-naked bagpiper in a kilt made of
shredded binliners.
Whatever else the Scots might think, it would be hard to describe the Prince
of Wales's present eight-day Scottish sojourn as dull. And Scotland is likely
to see rather more of this in the years ahead. The Prince - or Duke of
Rothesay as he is in Scotland - is in Edinburgh representing the Queen as this
year's Lord High Commissioner of the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland.
Much of the time will be spent attending the deliberations of the clergy. But
the Prince is spending a good deal of his week championing social,
educational and environmental projects. Such engagements are nothing new
but the way they are being carried out certainly is.
Although Scots receive easily their fair share of royal engagements, there is a
lingering perception that the Royal Family, with the exception of the Princess
Royal, regards Scotland primarily as a holiday destination. It is a view at odds
with the sentiment echoed in the Prince's opening address to the General
Assembly. Noting the way his own views had been shaped by the "wisdom
and forthrightness" of the Scottish people, he said: "I suspect I have come to
know Scotland infinitely better than any other part of the United Kingdom."
Royal officials believe that post-devolution there is more of a role for the
monarchy. As a result the Prince has moved his St James's Palace staff en
masse to Holyroodhouse, using his own money to build a covered hospitality
venue in the Holyroodhouse courtyard. Inside the palace, modern sculptures
by Glasgow art students sit below the old portraits. Musicians of every genre
have been booked to perform for the 5,000 guests who will pass through the
gates this week.
Saturday morning began with the full pageantry of heralds and hereditary
banner-bearers as Prince Charles arrived at the General Assembly. Much of
this ancient symbolism was omitted from last summer's opening of the Scottish
Parliament in the same building. But the premises belong to the Church of
Scotland, which does things the old way, and the politicians have been evicted
for this week.
Less than an hour after his departure, the Prince met five teenagers with drug
problems at Simpson House, a Church-run day centre for drug abusers which
takes a holistic approach. Talk ranged from truancy - "I never liked school
much but it's worth persisting," the Prince remarked - to music. "My two play
the most horrendous music. Thump, thump, thump," he said, to roars of
laughter. A meeting with an adult group followed. The Prince listened to grim
accounts of bleach-infected heroin and humorous tales of "hugging" therapy.
The informality continued at the half-finished headquarters of Dance Base, a
dance-for-all project of which he has just become patron. A Latin dance
lesson was in full flow and the Prince gamely joined in the merengue with the
instructor, Carol Ann Stephenson, to whoops of applause. It was Dance Base
which provided the street theatre - the unexpected guests - at the garden
party. "We are a broad church but this is not my thing," whispered one
minister as another troupe of cross-dressers skipped past.
Yesterday Prince Charles opened the £3 million Scottish Seabird Centre,
focus for a network of spy-on-the-nest cameras. He was the first to use the
televisual equipment at the centre in North Berwick, East Lothian, zooming in
on the gannets of Bass Rock, three miles out in the Firth of Forth.