Our banana monarchy is in bad shape. The royal family slept in a Van der Valk in Maastricht. Has the money run out? Are their Ukrainian refugees too expensive? Or did they not take a nap in the beautiful Kruisheren hotel because the chance was too great that the princesses would spend the night in the nearby Koestraat? Then the next day they would be dragging along after their parents with a fat hangover brittle and broke. And that was just not possible. Everything had to be as fresh and fruity as possible. The king is struggling with a self-created image problem and had to pull out all the stops. Only the elderly still believe in him. The peers of Johan Derksen. The youth will really itch this medieval puppet show. And the youth is right.
That is why I paid extra attention to the three princesses during the obligatory tour. Are they still interested in this nonsense? The youngest is still too small to express any of that feeling, but Amalia clearly has a sense of humour. She had kept her striped pyjamas on purposely. If that wasn’t a signal. But the middle one stole my heart. Alexia in her green jacket. What I liked about her so much was her look full of healthy disgust. Had she come all the way from Wales for this nonsense? For a rake dancing father? Plus an infantile quiz at the level of group 4? She knew enough when she saw her father swaying arm in arm with the mayor to music by André Rieu. Her eyes spoke not volumes, but libraries. She will soon publicly distance herself from this nonsense.
The image problem of our king. Polls don’t mean much to him, but he does want constructive criticism. Otherwise he would become some kind of Putin and nobody wants that. This rare crooked equation that no one understood came from himself. Even the former presenter of the good EO program Blue blood flapped his ears and then you must have furred as king.
What do you do about a lousy image? Maybe he should call John de Mol. He is also in serious trouble. What are his problems? His son, his sister, his brother-in-law, his transmitter. Plus another closet full of corpses that The Voice hot. Dirty things happened there that he didn’t see. De Mol is not only his name, but now also his nickname. And then he also has the three teenagers from Today Inside who had to laugh a little too hard at a raunchy step story from the grandfather of the trio. It had literally used a woman as a candlestick fifty years ago. An unconscious woman. An unconscious woman with taste. Because before he hit, she’d puked on him. The whole table laughed out loud at the story. Tears trickled down the old cheeks. His companion Gijp went the extra mile. Good thing there was no baseball bat. Everyone laughed a hernia. That’s how double they were.
In the meantime, the men have lost their laughter. The sponsors withdraw and Angela de Jong is angry. Even so angry that she appeared on two talk shows on Thursday evening. What’s the matter with that woman? Does this walking vinex conscience know she’s not the oracle she thinks she is?
Grandpa Derksen has now toned down the dirty anecdote. The candle did not go in, but next to the candlestick and if we wait another week it was two birthday cake candles that he had plugged into the socket next to the front door. And a little later we hear that Veendam had no keeper at all. Given the goal difference at the time, that could well be true.
The program has since disappeared. Angela will speak of a national disaster and John throws in the towel. He stops with his pathetic channel for good. No crowd, no cash register. Torn from the tube by a simple candle. The candle as a point of light. But there is an even more beautiful light on this weekend. Our national oligarch Sywert has lost a large part of his millions for the time being. That makes me happy now. I’m going to light a candle with the saint of money. And let that happen to be Sint-Corona. A name I didn’t make up. And it’s a lady. So just to be sure: light a candle. Do not enter.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 30, 2022