Durham Miners’ Association general secretary ALAN MARDGHUM speaks to Ben Chacko ahead of Gala Day 2025

LET’S hear it for the Queen. Elizabeth has been monarch for 67 years, since February 1952. She firmly believes she was appointed as top-bod directly by god and she is absolutely determined to keep doing the job until she dies.
Abdication isn’t on her agenda, she is happy to leave that to ruling wimps in countries like Spain or the Netherlands.
As her mother lived to 101 and she looks as if she might just do the same, she could be in the job for another decade. No wonder Charles looks so bloody miserable. He is waiting, without much hope, for the reign to stop.
We are constantly being told that Elizabeth hasn’t done too badly, at least if we exclude an Annus horribilis or two, scores of Royal scandals including marital infidelity, divorces, paedophilia, murderous car crashes, and bad driving by her husband and many other family members. And, as if that wasn’t enough, now there is Meghan and Harry.
I want to suggest a new campaign. Let’s celebrate Liz as the last and final example of the ridiculous anachronism that is our monarchy and when she finally goes, dead or alive, let’s toss the whole sorry mess into the dustbin of history.
So let’s start by taking a look at the queen herself, her life and wealth.
The Crown Estate, her property portfolio, is her main source of income, making millions from prime retail space in London and nowadays from offshore wind farms. In cash terms she is worth something approaching £400 million. She has many other sources of income. She owns and breeds over a hundred race horses with an average value of £75,000 each.
You and I, the British taxpayers, pay her and her bunch of hangers-on something like £50 million a year. But there are always extras, like a palace to rebuild. Or an extended foreign holiday — usually referred to as an official royal tour — for one or more of the family.
Yet Mrs Windsor heads what must be one of the most dysfunctional families anywhere. Divorce and extra-marital affairs seem almost de rigueur, while most of her male relatives seem to have developed close relationships with paedophiles.
Charles, the Prince of Wales, born in 1948, is the queen’s eldest son and first in line to the throne, although as we explain above he may actually die before his dear old mum.
Charles played the field before he married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, making her Princess of Wales. The couple had two sons, William and Harry, before they separated. Harry looked so much like one of Diana’s bits on the side that there has been some speculation about his real parentage.
Charles talks to trees, firmly believes he is a great architect and promotes all kinds of quack medicines like homeopathy.
Charles and Diana’s supposedly fairytale marriage was dissolved in 1996. Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997, leaving Charles free to marry Camilla Parker Bowles with whom he had been having an on-and-off relationship since they first met at a polo match in 1970.
Charles was great friends with Britain’s most notorious paedophile, Jimmy Savile, who visited Prince Charles’s London residence many times and acted as a kind of marriage counsellor when the marriages of Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were both disintegrating.
Prince Charles became close friends with Savile. In 1999 at a private meal at Savile’s Glencoe home, the paedophile got three young women to dress up in sexy waitress outfits. Charles’s thank-you card read: “Jimmy, with affectionate greetings from Charles. Give my love to your ladies in Scotland.”
Prince William — the Duke of Cambridge — is the eldest son of Charles and Diana, which makes him second in line to the throne. He married Kate Middleton in 2011. He and his wife had their first child, George, in July 2013: George is third in line to the throne. Their second, Charlotte, born in 2015, is forth in line and Louis, born in 2018, is fifth in line.
Not till after those three toddlers does Prince Harry get a look in. He is sixth in line to the throne, but that’s before we find out just what he really wants to do as a royal. Perhaps if the top job ever did become available he might come back from Canada.
Harry married US actress Meghan Markle in 2018. She was the first non-white woman to join the royal family. She found the racism of the British media hard to take and is now suing the Mail on Sunday and other papers over some of their coverage.
In January this year, Harry and Meghan said they would step back as senior royals and divide their time between Britain and Canada. They also said they intended to work to become financially independent. Neither the queen nor Charles wanted this to become a precedent so they said no at a royal summit. Now nobody seems to know what is actually going to happen.
Meghan and Harry’s first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, was born 2019, and is seventh in line to the throne. I love the idea of a King Archie.
Prince Andrew, or Randy Andy as he is better known, might be in disgrace because of his dodgy dealings with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, but rather amazingly that doesn’t rule him out as eighth in line to be king. Wise judgement or just plain decency it seems aren’t in the job description.
Andy married Sarah Ferguson in 1986 after both doing rather a lot of bed-hopping. After having two daughters they divorced in 1996 but are still living together. Daughter Beatrice is ninth in line to the top job and her sister Eugenie in tenth.
After his TV appearance everybody knows that Andrew cannot sweat but could easily take up a second career as a cook at Pizza Express. After that lengthy live audition any TV career has been ruled out due to lack of integrity. It certainly seems that despite all Andy’s assurances he won’t be helping American courts investigate what Jeffery Epstein was really up to.
This list could go on: Princess Anne – the Princess Royal — is the Queen’s second child and only daughter. She is the only top Royal with a criminal record. Her offence involved not controlling a vicious corgi. Anne has married twice: her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips, is the father of her two children, Peter and Zara, while her second husband is Vice-Admiral Timothy Laurence.
Zara Tindall has been banned from driving after she was caught speeding at 91mph in her Range Rover on exactly the same road where her mother Princess Anne was recorded driving well over the limit 20 years ago. Like most of the royals Zara makes an extra bob or two promoting various products.
One of her most lucrative deals is from Range Rover. After her speeding ticket and grandpa Phillip’s tipping a Range Rover on its roof the company is believed to be reviewing the royal deal.
Let’s draw a veil over the rest of this rat’s nest of privilege, elitism and nepotism. Let’s stop there and try to forget the scores of minor royals occupying palaces and shaking the begging bowl all over the country.
Join my campaign, give Lizzie her final round of applause, send the rest of the family off to find real jobs or auction them off as a job lot to an American TV production company. You know it makes sense.
Only one real worry: what will the Daily Mail find to fill those 18 empty pages. God save the Queen. God help the rest of us.



