The British royal family: For centuries, names such as Plantagenet, Stuart, Tudor and York rang out as the cream of British society. Elizabeth I was a great patron of arts and letters, as well as the impetus for a new round of exploration of the Western Hemisphere. Queen Victoria presided over a period in history in which the tiny island nation ruled supreme over one-quarter of the earth’s surface. King George VI was, in some ways, the glue that held British society together during World War II. Queen Elizabeth II and her brood can’t seem to hold a candle to such predecessors. The House of Windsor has become an international laughingstock.
Two weeks ago, the sitcom “That’s My Bush” premiered on the television channel Comedy Central. This irreverent show mercilessly lampoons the current first family, President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. However, the British Broadcasting Corporation has never done a sitcom based on the current royal family. Partly this is the reverence that is given to the royals, even now. It’s also partly that, after a good 20 years of making royal arses out of themselves, almost anything the sitcom writers could invent would be pretty tame. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

So now I present my own sitcom, “The Family Jewels.” The first episode pretty much writes itself: A few weeks ago, Sophie Rhys-Jones, the wife of Prince Edward and chairwoman of a public relations firm, began talking to a Saudi Arabian sheik to whom she told embarrassing revelations about the royals. Except he wasn’t a sheik. He was an undercover reporter from the Sun, a British tabloid, and was taping the whole conversation. (Opening music and montage. Cut to the throne room at Buckingham Palace. Elizabeth is on her throne. Charles is sitting in an alcove, sticking pins in a voodoo doll of the queen. The doors fly open and Prince Edward rushes in.)
Edward: Mother! We’ve got terrible news!
QE2: What is it this time, Eddie? Your play go under? Your dance troupe gain mass arthritis? Or did you finally find that conscription notice the Royal Navy sent you in 1985?
Edward: No, Mother. It’s even worse than that. Sophie, my wife, made a terrible mistake. She —
Charles: Married you.
Edward: I was going to say, she went and talked to the tabloids!
Charles: We thought you had a long talk with her about how “we don’t go gabbing to the Sun.”
Edward: Well I did, but she didn’t know it was a tabloid reporter!
Charles: Of course not! Since when do tabloid reporters wear outsized neon signs saying “I work for Fleet Street — please tell me everything and anything”?
QE2: (muttering) Oh ‘ell, this is as bad as Fergie going and doing commercials on telly for that Yankee fat farm.
Edward: He was dressed as a sheik!
QE2: Oh, bloody ‘ell. What did she tell the bugger?
Edward: She went and told how we all call you “the Old Dear.” And that we think of the prime minister’s wife as “hideous,” among other things.
QE2: Tell the Beefeaters to go find this sod! Off with his head!
Charles: As I believe I’ve told you some nine times today, Mum, we can’t do that anymore. Scotland Yard considers it homicide.
QE2: Oh, bloody ‘ell! It’s not like it was in the good old days. They don’t let me declare war, they don’t give me any power to rule other than opening bloody Parliament, and now you’re telling me they’ve taken away my last bit o’ fun — chopping people’s heads off and displaying them at Traitor’s Gate! Why in bloody ‘ell do they keep me alive anyway?
Charles: (with a covetous tone) We have all been wondering that, Mum …
The family, after a few misadventures involved in trying to get the tape back from the tabloids (including a “Mission Impossible” take-off scene where the Queen is suspended by a rope over the editor-in-chief’s desk) returns to the safety of Buckingham Palace’s roof, which is decked out in party lights.
Charles: Well, we’ve avoided that embarrassment, no thanks to your wife, Edward. How we ever put up with you —
QE2: Need I remind you, Charles Phillip Arthur George …
Charles: Oh damn! All four names.
QE2: Your fooling around with that Camilla hasn’t been a great mark on our family record. If you’d keep your little “Prince of Wales” where it belongs we’d be a whole bloody lot — (She tumbles off the roof, with a little helping push from Charles.)
Charles: Finally! Now I can be king! What do you think of that, Mum?
QE2: (shouting back) I think I’m not dead yet, you little sod!
Wait until next week when we see what wacky adventures happen when His Majesty King Harald V of Norway and His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Akihito of Japan, end up sharing a studio apartment in New York City.