Discover more from My Goodness! From Jo Elvin
How to wang on about a royal wedding
With one hour's sleep, one on-air fluke and one twisted ankle, I did it.
Have you been enjoying the Jubilee celebrations? To be honest we’ve had a lot on here with one of our favourite girls, my friend Lindsay, having her 50th birthday party so it’s been all about a different queen round these parts. But the whole spectacle has me reminiscing about my own brush with an historic royal moment.
I’ve written here before about my Tina Fey-adopted mantra: ‘Say yes, you’ll figure it out afterwards.’ Never was that more strongly deployed in my case than when I agreed to be a fashion commentator for the BBC’s coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Being brutally honest with you, I don’t know how I came to be in the position of even being considered for the gig. My agent at the time, the lovely Cate Dwyer at Avalon, must have had a cold call from producers asking for ideas about who might be able to wang on about outfits on live TV. I suppose over the years I’ve racked up a fair bit of experience of exactly that kind of wanging on Lorraine and This Morning, so she put my name forward.
I cheerily trotted off to a meeting at the Langham Hotel with BBC producer Catherine Stirk, with zero expectations of ever having more than this one conversation. She and an assistant asked me lots of questions about which designers I thought might be in the running as the designer of Meghan’s dress. Like every other member of the great unwashed masses, I of course had no earthly idea. I set my chatting mode to ‘full-tilt wang’ and talked a lot about Meghan being likely to opt for either championing an American designer, to honour her birthplace, or perhaps a female designer, to honour her already famous feminist voice. No, I answered, I don’t have a showreel of my live broadcasting work (and I still don’t, I’m an idiot like that) but I can do live TV as long as I can’t see or hear myself (shudder). It was chatty and jolly but I’ve done a lot of these kinds of meetings, and about one in every 50 comes to something.
So I was incredibly surprised when, after hearing nothing for a month, I got a call offering me the job. Maybe others had turned it down first, who knows.
Again, while half of my brain was telling me I was nowhere near skilled enough to step into such an occasion, the other half gave me my usual dressing down. You can read more about how that goes here. Of course I said yes.
Besides, I figured, I’ll be on air for two or three minutes, maybe two or three times. I’ve seen how these things go, I reasoned. The main hosts covering this pageantry will be up to their eyes interviewing the public, royal experts, and so on. My role will like those credited in films with things like ‘fourth mute bank teller’. I was even more convinced of this when about a fortnight before the wedding day, the BBC issued a press release about who would be appearing on their wedding coverage. The list was long - main hosts Kirsty Young and Dermot O’Leary would be ably assisted by a big cast, including Huw Edwards, Anita Rani, Ore Oduba, Alex Jones. In a long list of names, there was no sign of mine: the final proof that my role would be a blink and miss it affair.
The first inkling that I was deeply incorrect on this point came when I arrived in Windsor, as instructed, at lunchtime the day before. It was my first sighting of the script and my name was all over it. They had scheduled me in for about half a dozen times, for blocks of 20 minutes, to sit in the bandstand location with Kirsty and Dermot and speculate on the designer of Meghan’s dress. There were also blocks scripted in for commentating on guests as they arrived - who they were and what they were wearing. My stomach did a tiny lurch.
That evening I survived my first live moment with Kirsty and Dermot as I speculated wildly for what seemed like an hour (five minutes) on who might be designing the dress. Rumours at this time included Erdem and Stella McCartney. But they were just that. Rumours.
That done, it took two hours to drive the four miles to our hotel for the night, due to the swarms of excited royal fans, combined with traffic and closed off roads. It was 10pm and I had to be up at 4.30am but I was also starving. Alex Jones, Ore Oduba and I had to beg the closed kitchen to give us something - anything. Someone in the kitchen was thank god a One Show fan, so we got pizza and chips and one glass of wine; I thought it would help me sleep but it didn’t. I was too tense about possibly missing my alarm call so I think I got about an hour and a half before I was piling back onto a mini bus with the rest of the BBC cast and crew.
Most of my prep until that morning had been around the designers of the dress. This was going to be my main focus for my on air time - to be able to talk knowledgeably and (hopefully) entertainingly about the styling details of Meghan’s dress and, crucially, know a lot about the chosen designer. As we know, these details are always shrouded in secrecy until the very second a royal bride plants a silken slipper on that aisle. And when none of the possible contenders will even confirm if it isn’t them, it means reading up a lot of information that might well be useless.
Then there are the guests. Not only who might they be wearing, but, um, who might they be? As a working-class Aussie, my knowledge of peripheral royals is… patchy.
So when I looked across the aisle of that mini bus at 5am, I had a mild panic attack when I saw that Huw Edwards was sitting silently by himself reading a phonebook-sized wodge of notes. It was plastered with names and head shots. He was memorising important people’s faces, titles, roles. I hadn’t done anything like that. ‘At least you’ve watched some episodes of Suits,’ I tried to reassured myself, so that I’d recognise Meghan’s former co-stars.
(Sidenote: I remember texting friends that day and saying, bloody hell, you’ll think I’ve gone mad but Huw Edwards is REALLY handsome in person. Tanned, muscly, plus he simply refuses to acknowledge my presence, so that nails the crush. In the days after the wedding, newspapers did countless stories about ‘Huw’s hunky makeover’. But I called it first.)
The bus dropped us close as possible to our office for the day but this was a 20 minute walk through Windsor. As we walked past police armed with machine guns, we reluctantly agreed it was a reassuring sight.
From 6-9am I studied. I read every piece of news I could find that speculated on the dress designer, while my I got my make-up and hair sorted (statue stiff with volumising powder) and changed into my green Cefinn dress. I chose it because it was comfy and that kelly green is my favourite colour so I hoped that would make it a lucky dress.
The greenroom was stuffy, noisy, windowless and smelled bad and a total blast. Famous people wandering in and out, everybody high on adrenaline and the joy of the occasion. I got to meet an icon of American television, Meredith Viera, who wanted to know what I knew about the dress. (‘Um, nothing Meredith, pray for me.’) Anita Rani, Alex Jones and I cheerily ate warm tuna Pret sandwiches for our breakfast. Dermot O’ Leary’s stylist joked about, wondering aloud if he should make sure Dermot’s crotch area wasn’t too ‘bulgey’ on camera, for the BBC and a proper posh event.
As Kirsty Young, sitting next to me in make-up said, ‘It’s more usual for big news events to be sad news events. It’s amazing to be involved in a big, happy event.’ And it might sound cheesy but it’s simply true that we were all so cheered to be part of something as lovely as two people in love getting married. We were sort of all inhaling the polar opposite of a poison; bloody exhausted but high on joy.
At 10am I was being ushered on to set and all eyes were on me to name the designer. After weeks of everyone being convinced Meghan had chosen Ralph & Russo, my internet combing had thrown up a curveball rumour, seconds before I went on air. With the pressure on to bring new information to the table, I blurted out: ‘A fresh name in the frame this morning is Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy.’ When Dermot asked, ‘Where are you getting this stuff?’ I could feel my face go red as I said, ‘Um…just chat on Twitter.’ I felt silly. If there was any truth in it, it would have surfaced before now, right? But screw it, I thought, I need to have new shit to say every time I’m up there and, Dermot, this was my newest shit.
My task was to come on every 20 minutes or so and discuss either The Dress or arriving guests with Dermot and Kirsty. Any time I wasn’t on air, I was just to the side of the set, sweating over my phone for more info, any info.
I texted a friend who knows Amal Clooney and begged her to find out, ahead of her arrival, who she was wearing. I promised fashion PRs they could have my kidneys if ever needed in exchange for intel on which designers Pippa Middleton and Serena Williams had chosen.
My helpful husband emailed me multiple media alerts purporting to be ‘facts’ about the dress. I couldn’t think straight. My head was swimming with so much information that I just prayed silently that it would come out of my mouth with at least some coherence.
When I wasn’t on air, I’d positioned myself behind some of the cameras set up in the bandstand. At one point an exasperated floor manager told me I couldn’t keep standing there as it was a busy thoroughfare. I told him, just as exasperated, that it was the only damn place I could find where my phone had a signal so I couldn’t possibly move. He found me a corner just off to the side and if I could have planted a flag and erected a barbed wire barricade, I would have.
For me the most stressful parts were in recognising famous faces. (I really should have watched a few more episodes of Suits.) All those bloody hats! I’ve been looking at Oprah Winfrey all my life, but my TV nerves plus her huge hat meant it took me a few seconds to recognise her.
So when I thought it was Lady Sarah Chatto, Princess Margaret’s daughter, under a glorious Dior-inspired straw creation, I didn’t dare say in case it wasn’t. (It was. And now I think I could ID her while wearing a blindfold and just touching her face.)
Me being me, when nerves take over I blurt out things I shouldn’t. If I didn’t know ‘who’ someone was wearing I found myself saying things like, ‘She’d best avoid the soup course in those long fluted sleeves.’ But then if it got a laugh it egged me on.
When Kirsty asked me to identify the main trends coming through in the guests’ outfits. I blanked; in my head all I could think was, ‘Er, they’re all wearing clothes…’ Thankfully I managed to stammer something about darker, jewel colours being big for spring and, as if sent by angels, Victoria Beckham and Harry’s ex, Chelsy Davy appeared both sporting sombre navy.
Every time I was off camera, I’d be back on my phone and it was then - and really only then - that the enormity of this started sinking in as friends as far flung as Australia, America and someone on holiday in Malaysia started texting to say they were watching me. People I went to high school with and hadn’t spoken to since the 80s were tweeting me. My god, was everybody in the damn world watching this right now?! This was genuinely the first time I had considered that quite a lot of people would watch.
But by 11.45, all I cared about in the world was seeing That Dress. I’d had my fill of guessing and obsessing, and when Meghan stepped out of the car, I drank in every detail.
I’m not a seasoned broadcaster. Understatement of the century. But I went into some weird, adrenaline-fuelled mode of stream of consciousness chat. Because all eyes in that studio were on me expecting solid, unfaltering chat, on every tiny detail about the few seconds of dress we’d just seen through the car window, during Meghan’s journey to church. When the pressure’s on, it’s amazing the crap you can come out with. I found stuff to say about the ‘radical’ (by royal standards) neckline of the dress, the detail of the tiara. I speculated about her bringing daring details in like much more visible collarbone. Was the fabric white, or more cream? That’ll spin out into a good 40 seconds comparing to Diana’s off-white dress of 1981. I talked about everything from the blingy earrings, to the (I think) up-done hair, to the flick of her eyeliner. You wanted someone who can wang on, guys, well here I am delivering the wang.
Then came the biggest fluke of my life. Of all the names I’d been flinging around for hours, one of them turned out to be right - Givenchy. I have no idea now where I got that info from. I’m really sorry if it was you who got the exclusive for me to just repeat on the platform of the BBC. But a win is a win, folks, and this amateur needed it.
Watching the service was a brief chance to exhale in the studio – but only brief. Relax, sure, but also soak up every possible aspect for discussion and dissection back on air. I was mortified to find myself welling up. But here was that little boy we saw walking behind his mother’s coffin back in 1997, now having one of the most beautiful, happiest days of his life. I couldn’t help it.
I was trying to hide my face from the two TV pros next to me, so I could have hugged her when Kirsty said, ‘Oh here I go, weddings always set me off.’ Tissues were rushed to set for both of us. I turned to her: ‘They are just so… optimistic aren’t they?’ ‘It is exactly that,’ she nodded. ‘It’s the most optimistic, hopeful thing you can do.’
And then I had a shock. Suddenly on the TV screen I could see my hairdresser, George Northwood, sitting in the church. I’m so relieved we were not on air because I let out an involuntary shriek. Everyone swivelled to stare at me as I pointed to George, yelling, ‘That’s my bloody hairdresser!’
He’d cut my hair two days earlier and let me drone on and on about ‘my part’ in the wedding. He nodded and enthused about how exciting it sounded – all the while keeping the gigantic secret that he was doing Meghan’s hair for her wedding reception! I texted him: ‘YOU SNEAKY GIT!’ ‘I couldn’t breathe a word, sorry!’ came the reply.
And, like that, it was all over. My 15 minutes of fame consigned to history. I was exhausted but on such a high. The first glass of wine that evening was probably the best I’ve ever had in my life. I am eternally grateful to the producer, Catherine, for trusting me with this job and to the wonderful duo of Dermot and Kirsty. Despite all the pressure, they were so welcoming and put everyone at ease. There were times when you could forget it was being beamed to more than 13 million viewers.
No chance of that going to my head in my house though. Whilst I was on air, my daughter, 13 at the time, was getting her hair cut at our local salon where, naturally, they had the wedding on a TV for all to watch. ‘Oh wow, did you tell everyone that your mum was on the TV?’ I asked. ‘No!’ came the swift reply. ‘That would have been so embarrassing.’
And that, my friends, is showbiz. What a ride it was. Thankfully the memories are so vivid because I didn't think to steal anything from the day to keep as a souvenir, not even my laminated BBC pass. I did come home with a twisted ankle - from when a director had mistakenly positioned me next to Dermot and Kirsty before realising it was supposed to be someone else’s turn on air - and he yanked me off the couch so hard I heard the crunch. Sincere apologies to you if you were silly enough to ask me over the following days how I hurt my ankle.
Loved this! Your honesty is brilliant and refreshing Jo, such wonderful writing - thank you for sharing!
Delightfully honest. What a backgrounder