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Westminster Abbey was chock-full of Tories, but at least the most embarrasing guests were kept off-camera
Judging the status of a guest by the time of his or her arrival was an inexact art. At 9.50am John Major arrived. He was appointed a guardian of Prince William after Diana died, and yet came two minutes before Elton John, who preceded by some seconds the home secretary, Theresa May. Which guest were we to judge the big cheese here?
More baffling still, the Beckhams arrived nearly 30 minutes earlier, even though they were technically the most famous people there. At 8.33am the BBC reported that "perhaps surprisingly, it's first come, first served in the abbey", which would explain a certain readiness to queue and the unfashionable promptness of normally modish guests such as Rowan Atkinson, Guy Ritchie, Ian "Thorpedo" Thorpe, Ben Fogle and Joss Stone.
This was not any old crowd, where you could get to the front with sharp elbows and a bagful of attitude. There were alleged torturers there and all sorts. Well, one alleged torturer. We will come to him later, pausing first to note the proliferation of Tories. Theresa May was just the beginning: après elle, l'unbelievable déluge.
All the talk the day before the wedding was of why Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were not invited, while Lady Thatcher and Major were cordially welcomed. Jack Straw thought it was a straight oversight. The palace offered some lame excuse about the former Labour PMs not being Knights of the Garter. Surely space wasn't a consideration, since Lady Thatcher didn't go anyway.
If we'd known then what we know now – that there would be not just ex-prime ministers but loads of middle-ranking and even minor Tories peppered across the abbey, and it would in fact look more like Lady Thatcher's funeral than the wedding of two nice young people, we would have been even more perplexed.
Ken Clarke was so close to the action that when the choirboys did their descant, it looked as though it was coming from him, and he had a surprisingly high, sweet voice. John Bercow was there, which is perhaps explicable by the fact that Mrs B could get herself invited into a papal conclave if she set her mind to it. But Jeremy Hunt? Seriously?
Sam Cam looked terrific in Burberry. Cameron himself, after all that fuss about his suit (morning? lounge?), has turned into one of those men who makes any attire look like pyjamas. Nick Clegg looked way too hot.
However, as Conservative-studded as it was, the list of British dignitaries was not the controversial one: I know it's déclassé to mention it, and they disinvited Syria, and is that not enough for you human-rights-abuse killjoys? But there was a small knot of quasi-despots, striking an indelicate note despite the fact that they arrived quietly and did not draw attention to themselves by wearing taffeta or florals: the royals of Oman and Saudi Arabia and, most controversially, Bahranian ambassador Sheikh Khalifa Bin Ali al-Khalifa, who previously headed a ministry known informally in the country as the torture service.
Some unspoken rule of the day, however, meant that cameras obligingly looked away as they arrived; either that, or they arrived in the dead of night, wearing huge, furry hoods.
Other guests were most certainly there, but invisible to the naked television: naughty Uncle Gary (on Kate's side) was seen leaving his house in a blue Rolls-Royce Phantom, but no one saw him arrive. Besides anything else, where did he park?
The visible friends of the couple all had a charity bent: the head of the Tusk Trust, the chairman of Mountain Rescue, the chief executive of Fields In Trust. Useful people when you are about to go on a long journey and you want to make sure the environmental third-sector infrastructure is in place, but not obvious candidates for a knees-up. Where were the St Andrews lot? The Mahiki crowd? (This is a fabulous London cocktail bar, since you ask, on Dover Street. It is not that hard to get in, you just have to not mind that all the drinks cost £1m.)
They were there, is the short answer, but cameras had been asked to steer clear. The official rule for the day was: "If in doubt – could be torturer, chewing gum, dress too low-cut, hair like Phil Mitchell – cut back to Princess Beatrice." I saw her outfit so many times, I could recreate the hat with a cheese string.
Of course, by the time the family arrived there was space for everyone and no scrum. Inexplicably, both families – apart from the parents – were transported in minibuses. They looked like cabin crew. I say that not to make a snobbish dig at Carole Middleton's flight-attendant past, but because they really did.
But ah, bless. There's Kate in the car, beginning her waving career with a tentative, strangely angled motion. It's not the best but she has the next 50 years to tinker with it. You know it's a big day when you get to arrive after the Queen. It was hard not to smile when the last car pulled up.