Prince George shows the paparazzi what he thinks of them
I remember many momentous events from 1982. Or at least several.
My favourite pop band at the time, Bucks Fizz, scored not one but TWO number one hits, both of which I bought from Woolworths for the princely sum of 99p. A German woman called Nicole won the Eurovision Song Contest with a catchy song called Ein Bißchen Frieden and stunned the world (or at least the European part of it) by singing the encore in English, almost as if she knew she was going to win. I celebrated my 11th birthday – and used some of the money I got to buy a knock-off ‘Fame’ T-shirt from a shop in Wolverhampton – because Fame had hit our television screens that year, and instantly became The Only Thing That Was Better Than Bucks Fizz. In other televisual news, Channel 4 was born – and with it came The Only Thing Almost As Good As Fame, the sitcom Cheers (I like to think I had sophisticated tastes; plus, my mum let me stay up late to watch it). And that summer, I went on a Girl Guide camp, where we followed trails in woods, ate burnt lumpy custard, and heard through the radio the indisputable pop hit of the year (after Bucks Fizz’s singles), Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners. I remember being slightly confused by this song. Why did Kevin Rowland want her to take off her pretty red dress? What did he mean when he said his thoughts verged on dirty? And why did he look like he needed a bath? It was all very strange for an 11-year-old, not least because Dexys were grown adults who wore denim dungarees.
Slightly less confusing, though, was the birth of a baby that year to the pretty Princess Diana. Because she’d got married the year before, and that’s what happens, right?
Yes, in June 1982, Prince William was born. And looking now at pictures of William as a baby, it all comes flooding back. His enormous christening gown. Diana’s enormous shoulder pads. Charles looking completely at ease in his role as a new father:
When Chuck and Di (as an episode of Cheers once referred to them) left the hospital after the birth of Prince William, Diana was wearing a green polka dot, shoulder-padded smock dress with a large white collar. An unremarkable event, you would think, until its significance became clear last week – when, as Every Single News Outlet In The World pointed out, Prince William’s wife Kate Middleton stepped out in a green polka dot, shoulder-padded smock dress with a large white collar when she left the hospital with their first baby:
Spot the similarity
Sorry, what was that? It’s not the same dress? Silly news outlets!
But I digress. Because, unless you’ve been living under a rock – lucky you! – you may have noticed that The Artist Formerly Known As Princess Diana’s Baby is now a father himself. And yet it doesn’t seem like 31 years ago that he was born and given what seemed at the time a terrifically posh name: William Arthur Philip Louis. He, in turn, has just named his newborn George Alexander Louis, and it’s a sign of the times – or at least the expansion of the middle classes – that ‘George Alexander Louis’ doesn’t seem half as daft or utterly removed from our commoner lives as ‘William Arthur Philip Louis’ did in 1982 (or ‘Henry Charles Albert David’ did in 1984). Old-fashioned, traditionally upper class names may have become the norm for British babies born in the Noughties – but back in the Eighties, they were the preserve of royalty and the very occasional celebrity. I’ll never forget Tracy Ullman calling her first child ‘Mabel’, for example. It caused consternation, not least because Mabel was a boy.
But now? Now, a ‘George Alexander Louis’ could be the son of pretty much any parent in Britain – and there’s surely no greater evidence of the royals modernising than the fact that William and Kate have decided to give their child a mere three names as opposed to four of five. Hopefully they’ll call their second one Ethan.
Like anyone who’s older than Prince William, I’ve watched him grow up – albeit from a distance because a) I don’t mix in the same circles, b) I don’t care that much about the royals and c) they have extremely tight security. I’ve watched him do all the things an average child would do: go on trips with his parents, start life at university, meet his future wife, appear on stamps.
Yet it doesn’t seem like 31 years ago that he was crawling around, preparing for life as a royal by not doing much. And I feel this incredulity at how quickly the years have flown by whenever I hear that someone who I remember being born – whether that’s a famous person or not – has a baby themselves. But flown they have; and I know that the most likely explanation for this is that time simply passes more quickly as one gets older, because each day/month/year becomes a smaller percentage of the life you’ve lived so far. This phenomenon probably explains why the 1,000 year-old Doctor Who thinks he’s some sort of Time Lord. He’s not. He’s just really, really old.
But aside from that presumably scientific theory, there’s another reason why I feel this way: these people still seem like babies to me because somewhere in my heart, I am still my 11-year-old self. I still like the bubblegum pop I loved back then, after all. And I still dream of attending the New York High School of Performing Arts. But more than this: I still can’t understand why grown-ups would ever choose to wear denim dungarees.
