Sunday 5 June 2022 10:28 PM Hilarious and barmy... the final parade was so very British, writes ROBERT ... trends now

For all the faultless pageantry, the bravura musical recitals and some of the most mesmerising stagecraft ever seen, nothing could quite trump the simple sight of the greatest figure in British post-war history standing before us all on her balcony.

At the end of four days of national celebration – indeed, let us call it rejuvenation – the Queen had come to tell us what a large part of the planet has been saying to her in recent days: thank you.

She said it in words – with last night’s statement expressing how ‘humbled and deeply touched’ she had been by all the ‘kindness, joy and kinship’. Echoing both her Coronation oath and her immortal pledge, at the age of just 21, to serve us as best she can, she reassured as that nothing changes whatsoever in that department.

Just as eloquent was the closing sight which greeted the hundreds of thousands packing the full length of the Mall (some of whom had run its entire length, when the barriers lifted, to be in pole position for this moment).

Clasping her staff in one hand, like a bottle-green mini-Moses, she repeatedly waved at us with the other, acknowledging that she and we have all leaned on each other through these past 70 years.

For that was also the message of yesterday’s exuberantly barmy and delightful three-hour compendium of memories and tributes which brought this great jubilee to a close.

Though officially branded the Platinum Pageant, this was part-carnival, part-Olympic opening ceremony, part-Cup Final parade. Unrehearsed and full of the unexpected, it was also irredeemably, hilariously British. Would anywhere else on earth contrive to insert a section called Dames in Jags into a national parade – and then rejoice when one of them (Dame Prue Leith) ended up being pushed down the Mall after her vintage Jaguar conked out.

No wonder most of the occupants of the Royal Box were gripped, wondering what on earth might be coming next.

Split in to four parts, the event opened with the one component which was never going to go wrong. Called For Queen and Country, it featured all the Forces from all over the country and from much of the Commonwealth, too.

In their midst came the Gold State Coach – by far the largest, oldest and most uncomfortable occupant of the Royal Mews –which had somehow been kitted out with a fabulously realistic E II R avatar waving through the window. So far, so splendid.

Next up came an unashamedly festival of nostalgia billed as The Time of Our Lives but which might equally have been described as cultural icon bingo.

Pick any year from the last 70 and then say the first thing which comes into your head. The chances are that, whatever this might be, it was in this parade.

So, the Fifties included a hefty fleet of Morris Minors, a hundred dancers ‘doing the Lambeth Walk’ in period costume followed by another hundred doing the jive, plus a cross-section of early children’s telly programmes.

Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men skipped alongside the first of the open-top double-decker buses, which were supposed to be carrying famous faces from each decade. Sure enough, in pride of place on the Fifties bus was Sir Cliff Richard, not merely waving but belting out some of his early numbers. Dressed in his Union Jack jacket, he would, by rights, have been perfectly at home on any bus from any decade.

However, the Fifties are a bit low on living legends these days – with the exception of Her Majesty and the evergreen Sir Cliff – so the organisers had topped this one up with other celebrities.

Quite why former boxer Chris Eubank and singer Katherine Jenkins had been lumped in with the Fifties, no one seemed to know. No matter. This was a fiesta, not a history lesson.

A regiment of cyclists, dressed in just about everything except lycra, pottered along, led by Olympic legends like Sir Chris Foy and the multi-medalled Sir Jason and Dame Laura Kenny. It is unlikely that they have ever ridden so slowly in their lives.