Queen Elizabeth II died today. Here are my thoughts and feelings about the significance and symbolism of her life and death, recorded just an hour after I first saw the news.
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786. THE QUEEN
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Tag Archives: the queen
773. What do British people think about The Queen and The Royal Family? (with James)
Luke and James discuss their feelings about the Royal Family, with some survey results about the popularity of royal family members among British people in general.
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YouTube version (Automatic subtitles should be available soon)
Introduction Transcript
Hello listeners and welcome to the podcast. This is episode 773 “What do British people think of The Queen and The Royal Family (with James)”.
Yesterday I came back from my trip to London where I was staying with my brother for a few days. I mentioned it in the last episode. My weekend with James coincided with the celebrations for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. You might have seen reports of the celebrations on the TV or online wherever you are.
The celebrations involved a kind of military procession called the trooping of the colour, the lighting of Platinum Jubilee beacons across the country (a series of large flaming torches which are lit as part of a long tradition at this kind of celebration), a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, The Derby at Epsom on Friday (a horse racing event usually attended by the Royals), The Platinum Jubilee Party at The Palace (a big entertainment show with live music and celebrity appearances), Jubilee lunches and street parties which happened across the country (although I didn’t see any in the areas where I was visiting in South London) and The Platinum Jubilee pageant which is a sort of procession through the streets led by the Queen’s Golden Carriage. The Queen wasn’t actually in the carriage and so a sort of digital version of her was visible inside the carriage instead (this was a kind of animated projection of her waving from inside the carriage – a bit like a hologram but not, technically, a hologram).
I was planning to record an episode with James over the weekend anyway, and I felt we couldn’t avoid talking about The Royal Family because people are interested in it and so we decided to make a whole episode on this subject. The plan was to try and answer the question “What do British people think of the Queen and the Royal Family”. It’s hard to sum up what all British people feel about this, and so we decided we could only give our own opinions really, so it should really be “What do James and I think about the Queen and Royal Family” – but we are British people after all, so the original title still works.
As you’ll hear we tried to be objective and to weigh up the arguments for and against, or maybe to just express the complex feelings that we have about this – complex, mixed feelings because we can see both good and bad things about the whole thing.
So we just tried to express our feelings, but also to deal with the different points of view, and to refer to some surveys and public opinion polls that seem to show how British people in general feel about the Royals.
After recording we were slightly worried that we came across as a bit too negative or cynical towards the Royals and that perhaps we should have had a Royalist on for balance.
So here is a sort of disclaimer for the episode: We’re just two people taking and this is just how we feel. Our comments represent a very small sample of public opinion in the UK. We don’t hate the Royals or the Queen but instead we are just not completely sure about the arrangement.
As you listen you can see whether we think the monarchy should be abolished completely, or maintained, or some kind of third way. In any case, I hope you enjoy this episode and that you find that we were able to express ourselves clearly and that you understand exactly what we actually think about this subject.
I also want to say that after having published episode 772 (the one previous to this) in which I made some comments about other recent episodes like Spinal Tap and Sick In Japan – I received a lot of messages from listeners which put my mind at rest – namely that they loved the episode about Spinal Tap and they thought the audience were fine at my talk at the BC.
I do respond to a couple of those comments at the start of this, but then after 5 or 10 minutes we get properly into the topic of what we think of the Queen and The Royal Family, in quite a lot of depth. I hope you enjoy this conversation and find it informative.
Please leave your comments as usual. What do you think of the Queen and the Royal Family from your point of view. Maybe you observe these Royal events from a distance in another country, or maybe you are living in the UK and see it much more closely. In any case, let us know what you think too.
That’s it for my introduction. Let’s now travel through space and time into my brother’s living room on Friday 3 June in the middle of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Make yourself a nice cup of tea, get comfortable and let’s get started.
Links
Young People Want to Ditch the Royals (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/young-british-people-want-ditch-monarchy-poll-suggests-2021-05-20/#:~:text=The%20survey%20of%204%2C870%20adults,unchanged%20from%20two%20years%20ago.
What do the Brits think of the royals (The Week)
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/952455/what-does-the-british-public-think-of-the-royal-family
Popularity of individual royals article with a poll (The Week)
https://www.theweek.co.uk/104474/the-most-popular-british-royals
Image by Jhoan Cordoba from Pixabay
694. The Crown / The Royal Family (A Royal Ramble with My Wife)
Talking to my wife about the latest season of the Netflix TV drama The Crown, which follows the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II and her family. We talk about Charles & Diana, Margaret Thatcher, The Queen’s accent, Prince Andrew’s BBC interview and more.
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Introduction Transcript
Hello listeners, How are you today? I hope you are doing well. Here’s a new episode of the podcast.
Several things before we start.
WISBOLEP
The voting is over in the WISBOLEP competition. Yep, the voting closed on Sunday 6 December at midnight. I will be announcing the results in an episode of the podcast soon. So, stay tuned for that.
LEP Premium – www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
Premium LEPsters – hello. I just want to let you know that I have uploaded several premium episodes covering language from my conversation with Lucy in the last episode. I went through the conversation again and picked out over 50 words and phrases that you might have missed, or that I think are worth highlighting and then I presented them to you with explanations, examples, a memory test and pronunciation drills. That’s P28 parts 1 and 2 and it’s in the premium section now. Also, Premium series 27 is underway and I recently uploaded parts 1 and 2 of that to the premium section – they contain some grammar and vocabulary language tips and practice, with pronunciation drills too. Parts 3-8 will be coming up in the next couple of weeks. If you want to know more about LEP Premium including how to get the episodes, and how they can really help your English in various ways – go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
— JINGLE —
694. The Crown / The Royal Family (A Royal Ramble with My Wife)
In this episode I am returning once again to the topic of the UK’s Royal Family. This time I’m talking to my lovely wife about the royals because we’ve recently been watching season 4 of The Crown and so royal stuff is definitely on our minds at the moment.
Just in case you don’t know, The Crown is a Netflix TV series about the British Royal family. I expect many of you will be aware of it too and maybe you’ve also been binge-watching season 4 recently, like us. Here’s an episode all about it.
My wife, who is French, is particularly fascinated by the bizarre lives of my country’s monarchs and we often talk about the show and the real events it is based on, so we thought it might be interesting to share some of our thoughts with you in an episode of the podcast.
If you haven’t seen The Crown yet, and you’re worried about spoilers in this conversation, I don’t really think it is possible to spoil this show as it’s all based on real events which most people know about. In fact, listening to this before you watch the show, could even help you understand it and enjoy it a bit more. Also, if you have no plans to watch The Crown, I think that you can still enjoy listening to this. It’s not just for people watching the show.
I know what some of you will be thinking. You’ll be thinking – “Do you recommend this as a good show for learning English?”
Yes, as long as you genuinely enjoy it. I think most people agree that The Crown is good and that it’s interesting – high drama, beautiful to look at, great actors, an interesting topic.
You should also be aware that the characters speak in a very posh accent, which is not how most people speak. It’s not massively different to, let’s say, “normal English” but you should be aware that they do sound very posh and have a posh accent. It’s important to hear a wide variety of accents in English, because this is the nature of the language. It’s a diverse language and you need to take that into account when learning it. You should be able to understand the various accents and hopefully be able to identify them to some extent anyway.
So, overall – yes, I think it’s a good show to watch and can definitely be useful for your English.
To get more specific tips about how to use TV shows like this to improve your English, listen to episode 660 of my podcast.
The Crown is currently in its 4th season, which deals with the period in which Maragaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister, and when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer – later to be known as Princess Diana. So this is the late seventies, the eighties and the early nineties.
In this conversation you will hear us talking in the usual rambling fashion about things like:
- What we think of the show, including descriptions of how it looks and the production in general
- The performances by some of the actors
- Accents you can hear in the show, especially the high RP which is spoken by the Queen and other royals.
- What the show makes us think about specific members of the family, their stories, their relationships with each other and how they are represented in the show
- What the show makes us think about the institution of the monarchy itself, including some of the pros and cons of having a royal family – for the country as a whole, but also for the individual members of the family itself who enjoy the luxuries of their privilege but are bound by the duties that they have to the crown
- We also assess the reign of Elizabeth II, and talk about “Operation London Bridge is Down”, which is the codename that refers to the official plan for what will happen in the days after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, when that inevitably happens. It’s actually quite extraordinary and makes you realise how significant The Queen is to the nation.
- We also end up talking about the recent scandal involving Prince Andrew, who is one of The Queen’s four children – he’s the third one in fact. I don’t know if you are aware of this scandal, but it was big news in the UK. It is actually a disturbing and shocking story, but it’s also fascinating. I am referring to Andrew’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of the trafficking and prostitution of underage girls. Epstein died in prison in pretty suspicious circumstances. The official story is that he committed suicide but plenty of people believe that he was killed in order to prevent the truth from coming out. Anyway, Andrew was allegedly one of Epstein’s friends or “associates” let’s say and in fact one girl who was a victim of Epstein’s has made claims against Andrew specifically. In response to those claims, Andrew chose to conduct an interview with the BBC in 2018 . He wanted to deny all the claims against him, but the interview did not go very well and it was a bit of a PR disaster for Andrew. I find it absolutely fascinating as well as disturbing and I’ve been wondering for ages whether I should discuss it on the podcast. Keep listening to find out more about this whole story.
The Royal Family Tree
Before we start properly I think it will really help if I remind you of the basic family tree in the Royal Family.
So there’s The Queen of course. Queen Elizabeth II. She has been Queen since 1952 and that’s the longest reign of a UK monarch in history. Her husband is known as Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. In season 4 of the show The Queen is played by Olivia Coleman and Philip is played by Tobias Menzies.
The Queen’s mother was also called Elizabeth but she was commonly known as The Queen Mother. She died in 2002.
The Queen had a sister, called Margaret, known as Princess Margaret, played in the show by Helena Bonham Carter. Margaret also died in 2002, less than 2 months before The Queen Mother, in fact.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had 4 children. The oldest is Charles, the Prince of Wales and the heir to the throne. Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and she became Princess Diana of course. They had two children. The first is William, now the Duke of Cambridge and married to Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge. They have three children. The oldest is George and he is third in line to the throne after Charles and William.
Charles and Diana’s second child is Harry who is now married to Meghan Markle. Harry and Meghan are to some extent cut off from the royal family as they chose to leave their public duties fairly recently, and they were quite heavily criticised for that. William, Kate, Harry and Meghan don’t actually feature in the show, but they do come up in this conversation.
Charles and Diana’s marriage ended in divorce in 1992. Diana of course died tragically in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Charles later married Camilla Parker-Bowles, who he had been romantically involved with since before he married Diana. Charles and Camilla are now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall.
The Queen’s other children are Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
That’s probably enough information about the family tree there, but I decided it was probably a good idea to remind you of their names and their positions in the family, just so you definitely know who we are talking about.
Anyway, I won’t go on much longer here in the introduction, except to say that my wife enjoys being on the podcast from time to time and she loves talking about this topic, but she’s a little bit self-conscious about speaking English in front of my entire audience like this. But I assured her that my audience are all lovely and non-judgemental and that she has nothing to worry about – so, listeners, don’t let me down. OK?
Right then, I hope you now can enjoy sharing some time with us in our living room, having quite a long and rambling conversation about The Crown and all things Royal and here we go…
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Video Clips
That moment when Charles said “Whatever love means anyway…”
When The Queen met Michael Fagan after he broke into her bedroom
Ending
There’s nothing more for me to add here except this:
- What do you think about all of this? I mean about the royal family and all that stuff. Do you feel sympathy for the individual members of the family? Have you seen The Crown? What do you think of it?
- We didn’t talk much about Margaret Thatcher, played in this series by Gillian Anderson who first became known for playing Scully in The X Files. We are fans of hers, and my wife thinks her performance in the show was great. I’m not so sure. I partially agree. Anyway, we couldn’t cover everything in this conversation.
- Finally, what do you think – should I do an episode all about the Prince Andrew interview on the BBC?
Thank you for listening.
Reminders
Premium LEPsters – check out the app and the website for the latest premium episodes. If you’d like to sign up go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
WISBOLEP – I’ll be revealing the results and talking about what happens next in a forthcoming episode, soon.
Right, so I will speak to you again soon, but for now – goodbye!
169. A Cup of Tea with Daniel Burt (Part 1)
[1/2] Daniel Burt is a journalist, comedy writer and performer from Melbourne, Australia. He writes for two big newspapers in Australia, he worked as an intern at Late Night with David Letterman, he has his own page on Wikipedia and in his work he has interviewed Matt Smith, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which means he has met 2 Doctor Whos Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and The Hobbit! Wow. In this episode you can listen to us talking about diverse topics such as Australia’s relationship to The Queen & The Commonwealth, his work as an entertainment journalist, his time living in New York, the David Letterman show, Will Smith, show business, and zombies…
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I’m very pleased to have Daniel on the podcast for a number of reasons:
a) He is a bright, witty guy with lots of things to say, and he can talk the hind legs off a donkey (not literally, that’s just an idiom which means he can talk and talk!)
b) He is from Australia, so you can listen to his genuine Aussie accent and hear some authentic Australian English.
c) He has met Sherlock Holmes, Bilbo Baggins, Doctor Who and others.
Daniel is noteworthy enough to have his own page on Wikipedia. Click here to read it.
Daniel is a writer so naturally uses a lot of colourful language, descriptive vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. He also speaks pretty quickly in an accent that you might not be familiar with so listen closely. A transcript should arrive before too long but if you have any questions about words or phrases from this episode, please leave them in the comments section, with a time-code. ;)
This is a two part podcast. In part 1, this one, Daniel and I talk about these things:
The Zombie Apocalype
– Is my apartment safe?
– Would Daniel survive a zombie attack? Is he too complacent?
– Are people who like zombies all loners?
– Is Luke a loner?
Daniel’s Coin-dropping Habits
– Why can’t Daniel hold onto coins when shop assistants give him change?
– Why does he always drop coins onto the floor?
– Is it because Australian notes are so shiny and slippery, that the coins just slide off?
– Or is it just because he is socially awkward or nervous for some reason?
The Queen on Australian money
– How does Daniel feel about it?
– What’s the role of The Queen in Australian life?
– Will Australia leave the commonwealth and become fully independent?
Daniel’s work as an entertainment journalist
– Does he really have a Wikipedia page about him?
– What was it like living in New York?
– What was it like working for David Letterman?
Seeing Will Smith in the audience at a Parisian cabaret show
– Did he enjoy the show?
– What was the audience’s reaction to seeing Will Smith in the crowd?
– Did it affect the performance?
– What are the secrets of show business?
-And what does “getting jiggy with it” actually mean?
I’ve divided this into two episodes. So, stay tuned for details about his meeting with Sherlock Holmes, The Hobbit and Doctor Who in part 2.
Our conversation begins pretty quickly after we’d already been talking for about half an hour before turning on the microphone. Let me give you some context so you can hit the ground running.
Before turning on the microphone, we were talking about some of our favourite TV shows. I mentioned that I watch The Walking Dead, which is a show about zombies. I like zombies and that kind of thing, I’m sick and twisted in that way. Daniel doesn’t watch the show, and he isn’t a big zombie fan. He said he thought you’d need to be a bit of an idiot to get bitten by a zombie, because they’re so slow. Surely you’d see the zombie coming, and you’d just get out of the way, quite casually. I disagreed, and explained that getting bitten by a walker is easier than you might expect. Zombies might seem slow, but if you get complacent – over confident and too relaxed, that’s when you might be caught by surprise. If a zombie is walking towards you, he’s pretty slow so you might think you’re safe, but they’re unpredictable. What might happen is that the zombie gets about 3 metres away, and gets excited because he can smell your brains, and he trips slightly and starts to fall forwards. This means that his falling increases his speed and the momentum carries him to you faster than you expected. The next thing you know, you’ve got a zombie on top of you, and while you’re trying to deal with him, another one might have arrived behind you quietly, without you realising, and then you’re bitten, double bitten by two members of the undead. Then, later on, you’re a zombie too. Uhhh brains! Daniel didn’t realise this could happen. I reassured him, by explaining that up in my flat we would be quite safe from zombies because I’m up on the 6th floor, and my door is very strong. But that you still shouldn’t get complacent, even then. You can never be too safe from zombies, because, well, anything can happen. For example, let’s say, on the other side of the city, some guys have managed to escape from a zombie infested building by flying off the roof in a helicopter. “Ooh, that was close – good thing we had this helicopter!” But one of the guys in the chopper has been bitten, and he didn’t tell the others! He was too ashamed, too embarrassed. He kept it secret. Big mistake! Within minutes, he’s turned into a zombie, and he starts attacking the pilot. Trying to eat his brains. Horrible! The pilot gets bitten and he turns into a zombie too. Now you’ve got a zombie flying a helicopter. In the confusion the helicopter crashes onto the roof of my building – the pilot and passengers are all zombies, and they crawl from the wreckage and climb through a hole in the wall, into my living room, and Daniel gets bitten. Not me of course, I’d be ready with a cricket bat or a hammer or something. Maybe a crossbow. It would be tough, but I’d deal with them. Daniel though – he’d be beyond dead at that point, the poor guy. And why? Because he got complacent. Or zombies could manage to get to the 6th floor in a lift, by accident. Or just thousands and thousands of zombies could surround my building, and eventually break in by smashing all the windows and doors. Don’t worry though, it’s very unlikely to happen… or is it?…
So, that’s some context to the conversation I was having with Daniel before starting the recording. Now you can enjoy some chat with my Aussie mate Daniel. Enjoy!
Daniel’s Video Showreel
In part 2:
Daniel’s move to London
Cliches about Australian people
Typical Australian English phrases
Australian pronunciation
The Australian character and national identity
Australian politicians
The future of Australia & Australia’s image of itself
Sport & competition
Interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), Matt Smith & David Tennant (Doctor Who)
103. The Queen and The Royal Family
Opinions, facts and gossip about The Royal Family, as The Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee this weekend.
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Listen to Luke have a conversation with English Robot 4000 about The Royal Family. We talk about everything you need to know about the Royals, including the shocking rumour about Prince Harry (listen to find out more).
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Luke