Prince Charles Should Ditch the Monocle
The Prince of Wales has spent the past three decades persuading us he is not an eccentric, out of touch, talking-to-the-plants heir to the throne. And a pretty decent job he’s done of it too.
But all that fine work – all those youth unemployment initiatives and frugal patching of his suits – could soon be undone. By a monocle.
If reports are to be believed, Prince Charles is not keen on being seen in public wearing reading glasses. So he thought he would experiment with wearing a monocle, which he unveiled to friends at Sandringham.
Unsurprisingly, it did not go down well. There is no clearer sign of being one footman short of a full royal household than sporting one of these ludicrous items.
Monocles are for evil villains, bounders who whip their servants, and those with only a loose grip on reality.
I should know – I spent some of yesterday wearing one. And it is impossible to do so without resembling someone who has just stepped over an unwashed beggar in disgust. With a monocle clamped in your eye socket, you sneer.
There is a good reason for this – a monocle is an astonishingly uncomfortable piece of kit. The only way to fix the lens to your eye is to contort your face muscles into a grimace of disdain. And once you’ve got the dratted thing into your socket, you have to thrust your brass neck out and ignore the sniggers of passersby.
There are not many opticians who stock monocles, which gives some hint of their unpopularity. When I ring up Specsavers, the customer service person on the end of the line repeats several times, “a what, a montycal?” before I give up. Vision Express won some publicity for itself back in 2009 when it claimed to have started selling them to satisfy demand from young fogeys. Yesterday, the company said it had none in stock but could order one for me.
One firm that does sell them (at £75 a pop, mind) is Roger Pope & Partners, which holds the royal warrant as a “dispensing optician” to both the Queen and Prince Charles.
Leave a Reply