Monarch To Personally Fry Breakfast For 14,000 At Thame Food Fair, Palace Insists He "Has The Time".
The reigning monarch of these islands will attend the Thame Food Fair this weekend and will personally cook a full cooked breakfast for every single person who walks through the gate, a commitment the Royal Household has costed at 14,000 breakfasts, one pan, and what its own briefing note describes as "an acceptable level of wrist damage".
He will not be alone at the ring. The Household has confirmed that the Sovereign will be flanked for the duration by a celebrated television cook of many decades' standing, a bald, beaming man in a floral shirt whose name the Palace declines to give and whom the catering note refers to only as "the friend". The two are understood to have known each other for thirty years. They are further understood, on a rumour the Palace has neither confirmed nor bothered to kill, to holiday together in Scarborough every September, in the same guest house, in adjoining rooms, with a shared kettle.
"They go for the air," the catering source said. "They walk to the far end of the front and then they walk back. One year they did it twice. His Majesty has a photograph of the friend eating chips in the rain and it lives in a drawer in the private apartments and it is not for release."
There is also the matter of the hands. It has been said for years, never by the Palace and never quite deniably, that the Sovereign's fingers are known within the Household as the royal sausages, a phrase that appears nowhere in official correspondence and everywhere else. The Herald put the rumour directly to the Palace and was told that the term is "informal, historic, and not for the front of a menu".
The Herald understands the decision to attend was taken at the highest level and taken quickly, largely because there was nothing else in the diary. A source inside the Palace Catering Directorate, speaking on condition that we described him only as "a man with access to the toast rota", said the Sovereign had reviewed the fair's stallholder list and gone quiet for some time. "He counted the focaccia," the source said. "Then he counted it again. Then he asked for a map of Europe and a pencil. He was in that room for four hours. Nobody came to get him. Eventually the friend went in with a tray."
The move is being read across Whitehall as a polite but unmistakable protest at the quantity of foreign food being pushed at British food festivals, and in particular at the Italians.
"His Majesty's engagements calendar for the current quarter contains the fair, a tree, and a man from a water board," the source said. "The tree cancelled. So we are, in candour, quite pleased about the sausages. Both sorts."
Those close to the Sovereign describe a man with a great deal of energy and a diminishing number of places to put it. The heir, we are told, is engaged almost continuously with what the Household describes in writing as "the photograph application", a commitment that has not been costed and appears to involve standing near things. "He's very good at it," the source said. "There's one of him by a hedge that's done extremely well. His Majesty has seen it. His Majesty has not been able to see much else of him, but he has seen the hedge."
The Queen's position is understood to be more complicated. The Herald was told, without being asked to keep it back, that Her Majesty has in recent months developed what one aide called "a scrolling habit" and is now some considerable way into a televised programme about an American football coach who is relentlessly kind to everybody. "She's on the second run-through," the aide said. "She cried at the biscuits. His Majesty asked her what happens in it and she said she'd rather he came to it fresh. That was in March. He has taken it well. He has the friend."
Operationally, the plan is ambitious. He will occupy a single gas ring from 6am, working from a rolling stock of eggs held in a temperature-controlled marquee guarded by two men from the Household Division and a woman from the parish who owns the only working thermometer in the village. Beans will be held in reserve and released only on a signal. Black pudding has been designated a strategic asset and will not be available to press. The friend has been given no formal role, no pan and no authority, and will stand at the Sovereign's right shoulder laughing at a volume the Household has measured and cleared.
"He is there for morale," the catering source said. "He is not there to cook. That was made very clear to him in writing and he agreed to it in writing and then he brought his own apron anyway. We have decided not to make an issue of the apron."
The hand question has, unhelpfully, become operational. The Household has confirmed that all frying will be conducted with tongs rather than fingers, "to avoid any confusion at the pan", and that at no point will the Sovereign gesture over the cooked meats with an open palm. A fair steward has been briefed to intervene if the public begin pointing. "We have modelled it," the catering source said. "If he reaches across the tray, we lose the tray. People will say it was one of his. We cannot prove it wasn't. We are not going to try. The friend finds this extremely funny, which does not help, and which is, in fairness, why he is there."
On the continental question the Household's line has hardened in a way nobody has asked it to. In an unprompted addendum to the catering note, it is stated as settled fact that the Italians have had two thousand years and have produced, by the Household's count, one sauce and a series of increasingly narrow shapes, while this country produced the fried slice in an afternoon, by accident, out of spite. Asked how the two thousand years was arrived at, the Palace said it had been rounded up from a feeling and that the feeling was strong.
There are logistical concerns. At an average of eleven seconds per breakfast, a figure published without explanation, 14,000 breakfasts requires roughly forty-two hours of continuous frying, which exceeds the length of the fair by about a day and a half. The Household's response, issued in full and honoured here in full, was: "His Majesty is aware of arithmetic and has chosen to proceed anyway. His Majesty is also aware that nobody is coming to collect him at six. The friend has said he will stay. The friend has said this before."
Fair organisers have responded with what one described as "complicated enthusiasm". The stallholder liaison officer said the event had spent four months curating a balanced international offer and was now expected to find parking for a nation's worth of sausages. "We had a man coming from the coast with fourteen varieties of pesto," she said. "He may still attend. He will be positioned behind a hedge. We are told the hedge has precedent."
The escalation came late on Tuesday, when the Household wrote to the fair requesting that all pasta on site be served at room temperature "so that people can see what they're dealing with", that any dish containing more than two herbs be accompanied by a written explanation, and that visitors be issued on entry with a small flag, to be surrendered at any stall where they enjoy themselves too much. A third clause requested that no stall photograph the Sovereign from below the wrist. A fourth requested a second stool, unexplained. A second letter arrived forty minutes later asking whether the fair had a landline, and whether Scarborough was reachable from it.
The Sovereign's own view remains unstated. The Palace confirmed only that he had been practising, that he had got his breakfast time down to nine minutes, that he had described the result as "perfectly good", and that he had photographed it and sent it to two people. The Herald asked whether nine minutes was compatible with eleven seconds. The Palace said that it was, in spirit. The Herald asked whether either of the two people had replied. The Palace said one of them had, immediately, with three exclamation marks, and that it was the friend, and that it is always the friend. The Herald asked who the second person was. The Palace ended the call.
The Crendonbury Provisions Fair runs over the first weekend of next month. Entry is free. Breakfast is guaranteed to the first fourteen thousand attendees, or, on the Household's own more cautious modelling, to the first eleven, after which he will simply stay at the pan until somebody tells him to stop, which, on current form, will be the friend, at about four in the afternoon, by taking the spatula out of his hand and suggesting they get some air.