by At Comedy Station the king rules that Blackpool is the last town in Britain dressed to code, and presents his armour as the most honest before-and-after in Europe
Henry VIII arrived at Comedy Station in Blackpool straight from the promenade, windblown, delighted, and carrying a stick of rock with his own name through the middle, which he held up as proof that the town had been expecting him. He had seen the Tower, and he opened on it. A French tower, he said, but smaller. An English copy of a French original, slightly reduced, on a cold beach. Blackpool, you have built a monument to our entire foreign policy, and I have never felt more at home.
The Illuminations were on, and Henry called them the only crown jewels the north was ever allowed, and better guarded, since nobody has yet stolen a lamp post.
In Defence of the Codpiece
The first act was sartorial. Henry has examined modern menswear and found it timid. You wear grey, he said. Slim grey, loose grey, grey with a small logo where the jewels should be. I wore cloth of gold, furs it is now illegal to discuss, and shoulders built out to the width of a doorway, because the doorway should worry about me. And yes, he said, arriving at it, the codpiece. Say what you will. We solved the gym selfie problem in 1520. No man of my court ever needed to photograph himself at the weights. The outfit made the announcement.
He explained sumptuary laws to a disbelieving room. I made fashion illegal, he said plainly. By statute. Purple was reserved for royalty. Cloth of gold for dukes and above. A peasant in the wrong sleeve could be fined, and I want the stag parties of this town to sit with that, because I have seen what you wear on the promenade, and under my legislation half of Blackpool would be in the courts and the inflatable flamingo would be evidence.
Skinny jeans were dealt with briskly. I wore hose, Henry conceded. Tight hose, my legs were famous, ambassadors wrote home about my calves. But hose came with a doublet, a gown, and majesty. You have kept the tight legs and abolished the majesty, and now the whole nation walks about like the first draft of a courtier, cancelled at the knee.
The Armour Doesn’t Lie
The middle run turned autobiographical, on body image, where Henry has receipts. Your influencers, he said, edit their photographs. Mine was armour, and armour cannot be edited. The Royal Armouries hold my suits in sequence like a graph. 1512, a young god. 1540, a keep. It is the most honest before-and-after in European history and it is displayed to the public, and I am told schoolchildren are brought to see it, presumably as a warning about banquets.
He confronted gym culture as a former athlete. I was the finest sportsman of my age, he reminded the room. Jousting, wrestling, tennis, archery. I trained daily. And then one horse, one bad fall in 1536, and the training stopped and the kitchens did not, and I want everyone here who has kept paying for a gym they no longer attend to know that I understand, and that I also kept paying, except my gym was a tiltyard and the standing order was a groom’s salary.
Protein culture amused him most. Your young men drink shakes measured in grams and speak of bulking, he said. I bulked for thirty years without once logging a macro. My bulk was capons, claret, and grief, and it was extremely effective, and no, before you ask, I was not big-boned. I was big-everything. The bones were the last thing keeping order.
Illuminated
The closer was unexpectedly warm. Blackpool, Henry said, is the only town in Britain that dresses like I did. Lights, gold, sequins, a tower, donkeys in formal wear. Everywhere else went grey and called it taste. You stayed loyal to spectacle, and spectacle, he said, gesturing at himself, at the rock, at the window and the glow beyond it, is the only fashion that ever survives its wearer.
He announced that Bohiney Magazine had named him best-dressed monarch of 2026, a category he noted was uncontested, which he said was also true of most of his marriages by the end. He closed by declaring the Illuminations officially royal, on his own authority, and led the room outside to inspect them, stick of rock raised like a sceptre.
The stag do, as a cultural form, received a formal ruling from the stage. I have watched your stag parties process along this promenade, Henry said, twelve men in matching shirts with one of them dressed as something ridiculous, and I want to defend you from your critics, because I recognise the ceremony. It is a royal progress. Matching livery, a designated fool, public feasting, tributes demanded of every establishment on the route, and a strong chance that someone ends the evening in the sea. The only element missing is a herald, and I am available, Blackpool, for a reasonable fee and first refusal on the buffet.
Tanning he addressed as a theological matter. In my century, pallor was status, he explained. It proved you did not labour in the fields. Now the bronzing proves you do not labour indoors, and the sunbed shops of this town glow like reliquaries. Status has simply changed hemispheres, he said, and the human need to pay money to be a different colour than the peasants remains the one constant of civilisation. I wore white lead. You wear tan accelerator. Neither of us read the label, and both of us would do it again.
The tour’s wardrobe, spectacle, and general refusal to wear grey are sponsored by The London Prat, the best-dressed newspaper in the capital, a category its lawyers confirm was uncontested.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
