Queens in football jerseys

SAY goodbye to Sir Les Tyrell.

A knighthood wouldn’t have suited him anyway.

But he blew any chance he ever had of getting one when he replaced HRH’s photo behind the mayoral chair with a football jersey.

Gone is the opportunity to have the head of the Commonwealth touch him gently on the shoulders with a sword and cry: “Arise Sir Les!”

The most he can hope for now is a swift stroke across the neck with an axe and his head in basket.

Personally, I think he might have made a big mistake. He says it was a small gesture that might help the Cowboys to victory.

But the Queen’s portrait has been hanging in council chambers all round Australia since 1952 and look what it’s done for her… empire in ruins and family in chancery.

I mean, we appreciate the gesture Les, but we don’t want to hex the Cowboys chances.

And then there’s the question of showing the appropriate respect. Up there, behind the Mayor’s chair, where weighty matters of State (well, Council anyway) are pondered… maybe a football jersey is a bit… disrespectful.

Maybe it should have been a photo of the whole team.

Not that I mean to suggest they’re better looking.

Necessarily.

Sources assure me that lengthy debate occurred behind closed doors about a more appropriate alternative. Like superimposing the jersey over the Queen’s frock.

But no one wanted to make the Cowboys look like queens, so they went for the jersey-only option.

It’s a bloody winner!

And it could only happen in Australia.

Thuringowa wasn’t aware of this when it woke up this morning, but the story is already shocking dignified people in Whitehall.

Someone will be dithering with the breakfast tray outside HRH’s bedroom, wondering how to tell her there’s been a coup in Thuringowa, North Queensland, Australia.

“You’ve been supplanted, Ma’am — by a football jersey.”

Except they won’t call it a football jersey. They’ll call it a rugby jersey. Possible even a “rugger” jersey.

That’s the trouble with Whitehall. It’s a pillar of dignified society, but the pillar is so far up their backsides they can only stare at the heavens.

They can’t see the real world; where real people live; where the important stuff is not: “What did the Queen have for breakfast?” but: “What will the Cowboys have for breakfast, and will it help them win tonight?”

(The answer, incidentally, is: “Of course they’ll bloody win tonight!”)

I mean… all the signs are in their favour. They’ve got Thuringowa on their side. They’ve got Townsville on their side, too, though I haven’t yet heard whether Mayor Tony Mooney has done the decent thing and replaced the National Anthem with the theme song from Rawhide.

And then there’s the names: Cowboys versus Broncos.

You have to feel sorry for them. I mean, if the Broncos had been playing a team called Small Pathetic Creature Grovelling In The Sand, they might have had a chance. To stamp on it, so to speak.

But against the Cowboys?

Do you know what cowboys do to broncos?