Christopher Pearson, and speaking of immature reactions of a pompous kind ...

(Above: Barry Humphries showing impeccable good taste, and putting the wedding in a frock perspective).

Who'd have thought that Christopher Pearson was an aspirational David Flint - not there yet, but trying hard, or very hard at being trying - but there you go, and there, for that matter, goes a Saturday, with the impeccable comedy timings of his column Wedding ban attracts immature reaction.

Flint of course excelled himself by becoming The biggest April Fools in Australian history, and for a moment, I suspected he'd had a hand in crafting Pearson's opening par:

Michael Shmith is a senior arts journalist with The Age. His mother's second marriage was to Lord Harewood who, as well as being an opera impresario, is a grandson of George V and a first cousin of the Queen.

Dear sweet absent lord, what on earth has that got to do with anything?

Well of course it reveals that Mr Shmith has impeccable lines to the firm, and so we must tug our forelocks, do a little curtsy and be ever so humble, since there's nothing so important as blue blood in the eyes of a man who learnt about poncedom in Adelaide.

And now stand by for shock horror, and for utter scandal, because Mr Shmith has been a traitor to the firm:

Shmith has spent a good deal of time in the company of his stepfather and that branch of the family, so his response to the news that the Chaser team had been prevented from providing a running commentary on the royal wedding on ABC2 came as something of a surprise.

Now why spending time with members of a family should prevent you from having your own personal opinion comes as something of a surprise, unless of course you live in the blinkered world of conservatives, where toeing the line, and personning the fort and maintaining a united front, and becoming one of the collective poo bahs is essential. Here's Pearson quoting Shmith:

"Call it what you will, fetch whichever cutting device you wish from the toolshed, this is, to me, nothing short of censorship. Worse, it is censorship initiated not by the broadcasters concerned but from within the severe stucco Nash facade of Clarence House . . . How narrow-minded, how unnecessary."

Shocking Mr. Shmith, and no matter how you might spell your name, clearly you're a treacherous traitor, and Christopher Pearson is right on your tail, his Spitfire guns (2omm cannon and .303 machine guns) blazing away, tally ho lads, what for, pip pip:

No doubt there are people who imagine comedians are somehow entitled, as of right, to footage of the royal wedding and that being denied it is a form of artistic or political censorship, but Shmith really ought to know better. Would he expect the Pope to grant the Chaser team a live feed of Easter mass at St Peter's, for example?

Oh no, not the Pope, stop giving the Chaser lads ideas.

Then of course, like a representative from Sony, the pompous Pearson delivers Mr Shmith a lecture on intellectual property rights, and the imperious obligation of the Pope to prevent the Petrine office from being profaned or held up to ridicule. When the Pope manages to do that all the time in a most satisfactory way, all by himself ...

Oops, I don't think Mr Pearson scribbled that last line, but speaking of arrogant bloated grandiose types, how's it going Sony, what with the shift from root kits on the CD to a total stuff up when it comes to preserving customer data (and if you're lucky you can sneak through the paywall to the WSJ, and the latest news here in U.S. Officials Quiz Sony on Data Theft).

Back to Pearson, and if it's a matter of maintaining dignity and status, then why was Barry Humphries allowed to do his dame routine for the cameras?

We all know why Humphries was there. His sting and his career have been in slow decline, yet the need to perform still compels, and dignity isn't his forte or stock in trade.

Indeed, as a kind of panto dame, he's been trading on vulgarity for years, and what better way to trade off and keep in the limelight than prancing about with a royal wedding in the background, in keeping with his parasitic attachment to the royals as a source of comedy stylings.

Surely Humphries should have been banned, perhaps shoved into a coal shuttle or stored in the attic like a mad aunt for the duration of the proceedings.

Ah not so:

If there is any lingering suspicion that the royal family is humourless or overly censorious, readers should remember that Dame Edna Everage was allowed a part in the proceedings, as she had been in the jubilee celebrations and command performances. In this respect she is like King Lear's jester, the "all-licensed fool". Edna's wit is no less anarchic than the Chaser team's. It's just better judged and funnier.

Yes, you see there's one rule for some and another rule for others, as befits the fickle royal prerogative, and besides Pearson much prefers the humour to be found in a man dressed in a frock, and nothing wrong with that, as where would football humourists in Australia be without benefit of being able to deliver their jokes while dressed in a frock.

It's a frock-led revival of good taste and wit, and elegant references to King Lear:

Ha, ha! look! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the
head, dogs and bears by th' neck, monkeys by th' loins, and men...

Well men wear frocks if they want to do decent comedy, whereas the Chaser team has a weakness for stunts in questionable taste - not to put too fine a point on the matter - and so it's no wonder the house of Windsor would refuse to submit meekly to such mockery, or so Pearson says.

Even more sadly, those damned Jesuits and their online rag Eureka Street have joined the quisling Fairfax press in getting agitated about the ban, and there's none worse than Ellena Savage scribbling Monarchy's undemocratic war on The Chaser:

Until the ban, monarchists and the ambivalent masses alike could argue that monarchy was an effectively powerless symbol of the Commonwealth's cultural longevity and propriety, which did not impinge on liberal democratic values.

Ironically, its effective ban on democratic media representation provides a welcome jolt back to reality.

British monarchy is not the benevolent and benign institution we pretended it was, but a neurotic, self-perpetuating liability. It was their benevolence alone that guaranteed our unquestioned support, or at least tolerance, of their persistence as anachronistic figureheads in our parliamentary structure.

What ho, what say you pompous Pearson to this preening coxcomb, who sounds vaguely, offensively republican in tone?

This is all pretty silly, even by the standards of student magazines, and the fact a Jesuit organisation chose to publish it goes a long way towards explaining why the phrase "Catholic intellectual" nowadays strikes so many people as an oxymoron. But there's worse to come.

In much the same way as describing Pearson as an intellectual scribbling for The Australian is, if not an oxymoronic, then surely a conceit, a flourish, an ironic hyperbole, a satirical flourish or flowering ... but there's worse to come ...

Savage's sin, you see, is to have written and edited Melbourne University's student magazine Farrago, which is far worse than Pearson having spent his wayward youth on the Adelaide Review. And she takes a most unseemly attitude to the Windsors:

According to Savage: "We consume the Windsors as we do soap operas. We want them to get fat and to struggle. Celebrity culture is fundamentally about schadenfreude, even where it is disguised as idolatry."

Oh I say, that's just too much, young lady, far too much, with its hints of Princess Diana cavorting with men from the middle east, and Fergie toe-sucking and Harry going Nazi party gear, and so on and on, an infinity of scandals and paparazzi tedium in the past few decades, and if not that, then conservatives hoping for a palace coup so that the mad greenie, the 'talking tampon' Prince Charles, and his divorced older consort, is prevented from ascending the throne ... and the women's magazines full of it, and the general IQ dropping at least ten points in the process.

Oops, sorry, we should let the most genial and caring pompous Pearson speak:

While I've no doubt that's how Savage sees Prince William and his bride, I think most of the people in Australia, as well as Britain, who are the least bit interested in the royal wedding will think they're an attractive pair, recognise that Catherine Middleton has taken on a very demanding role and wish them well.

In the same way, people of goodwill habitually wish luck and perseverance to any couple who embark on a life commitment to one another in full knowledge of the difficulties in living up to their vows.

Yes, indeed. Any couple, provided of course that they're decently heterosexual, because really the notion that all loving couples deserve to be treated equally is entirely specious (as the pompous Pearson declaimed in Gay marriage demands should be left on shelf).

Naturally Pearson doesn't extend the same generosity to the Chaser lads:

Judging from the Chaser team's statement in response to the ban, it's hard to imagine that we'll have missed much: "To ensure that our coverage was respectful, we were only planning to use jokes that Prince Philip has previously made in public or at least the ones that don't violate racial vilification laws."

Oh I say chaps, did you mean the one about staying in China so long you'll end up slitty eyed, or the question to the Aborigine asking if they still threw spears at each other, or the one to the Scottish driving instructor asking how he kept the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test, or observing to the student trekking in Papua Guinea that he hadn't managed to get eaten yet, or observing to the traditionally robed president of Nigeria that he looked ready for bed, or remarking on the difficulties of telling apart Pakistanis and Indians or (insert your own fond memory here) ...

Please, Mr. Pearson, give these coxcombs a serve:

Now if the Chaser team were half as anarchic and politically incorrect as they claim to be, they'd at least give Prince Philip some credit for speaking his mind.

Yes, Chaser lads, you wretched parasites, he's just speaking his mind, and what a useless royal mind it is, how wondrous in its narrow minded superficiality and superciliousness. You would do so much better in life, Chaser lads, if you just emulated Prince Philip. Why not revive Alf Garnett in a royal sitcom? Now that'd be funny, and you'd have the BBC on the hook ever so fast.

Of course, Pearson has no time for the ABC:

The ABC's director of television, Kim Dalton, had the effrontery to say he was "surprised and disappointed" by Clarence House's intervention, adding "we are a mature enough country to enjoy this particular take on this event".

Yes, Dalton, bald faced effrontery, damned cheek sir, ever so bold and improper, just like the Chaser lads:

... the truth is that the Chaser's stunts were always undergraduate and appealed to a streak of immaturity in its audience. As well, assuring us that we're "mature enough" is an attempt to ingratiate, transparent enough to be offensive, which had well and truly passed its use-by date long ago, during the republican referendum debate.

Yes, that was way back in '99.

Phew, whatever you do, don't mention The Chaser APEC prank of 2007 which so upset the Liberal government, John Howard and conservative tossers in general.

Most people, if they had half a clue, would date the Chaser's peak and used by date to that point - how could the stunt be beaten - but in his usual vindictive, mean-spirited way Pearson is always content to show he doesn't have even half a clue.

Instead, what the public was entitled to expect from Dalton was a grovelling apology that the national broadcaster had even considered commissioning that sort of immature commentary.

Yes, grovel Dalton, grovel and kneel before their collective majesties and the pompous Pearson, courtier to a bunch of drones in the beehive, or else it might be time to lop off your head, as was once the habit in the finer days of untrammelled monarchial powers. Sob, that we should never see those days again ...

Come back Henry VIII, all is forgiven ...

So where does this leave us?

Well if there was any lingering suspicion that monarchists like Pearson and Flint are uttely humourless and overly censorious, you simply have to read Pearson to have these suspicions completely confirmed, because it's been such a long time since The Australian has run such a humourless, overly censorious piece. It's been at least a full week, back to the time they ran Pearson's column last Saturday ...

And if nothing else it provides a most excellent reason for the Chaser lads to have striven and failed to send up the royal wedding, because in the process, Pearson sends himself up in a most splendid and revealing way.

Well done Chaser lads ... the aspirational Flint has moved further up the aspirational monarchical ladder, or at least further up his fundament ...

(Below: and now because the pond always considers its gentlemen readers, and deplores the paparazzi, a photograph of Kate Middleton which will surely pump up the hits for this wretchedly obscure site. Take that, Women's Weekly, take that New Idea, take that Chaser lads).

(Say what? You want more? You have an insatiable appetite for the dignity of the crown? You want Savage confirmation of the celebrity culture that surrounds the Royals? Consider it done).