by The former monarch expresses genuine surprise that modern institutions can cancel entire traditions with a single press release
Good evening, good evening, mind the sticky floor, I am told this particular Shoreditch basement has “character,” which I believe is the modern way of saying nobody has properly cleaned it since a previous decade.
I read this week that ITV has confirmed the 2026 British Soap Awards will be completely cancelled, and friends, I want you to understand that even I, a man who cancelled entire marriages, entire religious allegiances, and occasionally entire people, never managed to cancel an established annual awards ceremony in a single clean announcement. There is something genuinely impressive about that level of institutional decisiveness.
On The Matter Of Cancelling Beloved Traditions
I understand this particular ceremony has honoured the nation’s soap operas for years, a genuine annual tradition now simply, cleanly, gone. I once tried cancelling an entire religion’s authority over my own kingdom and it took me the better part of a decade, several acts of Parliament, and considerable international diplomatic fallout. ITV apparently achieved something comparably significant to national tradition with a single press statement. I am, genuinely, rather envious of the efficiency.
A Word On What This Means For Soap Opera Fans Nationally
I imagine there is genuine, real grief among the nation’s soap opera devotees tonight, mourning a tradition that once felt permanent and has now simply ceased to exist. I understand this grief intimately, having personally dissolved several institutions my own subjects considered permanent fixtures of national life, usually to considerably more vocal public objection than a cancelled awards show generates.
The Closer
I shall leave you with this. Traditions end, awards ceremonies get quietly cancelled, and somehow the nation continues watching its soap operas regardless of whether anyone hands out a trophy for it annually. I did rather more dramatic institutional cancelling in my own time and the country survived that too, eventually, mostly. Good night, mind the sticky floor, and mind your own beloved traditions, for apparently nothing is quite as permanent as we’d like to assume.
An Encore Nobody Asked For
One more thing before I’m cut off, as is apparently customary once a comedian overstays his welcome, a fate considerably less permanent than my own at Tower Hill, though I’m told it feels similarly abrupt to the performer experiencing it. In the green room, surrounded by crisps and a poster for an event that appears to have happened several years ago, I kept thinking about how quickly an institution can go from beloved annual fixture to simply, quietly, not existing anymore.
Let me leave you with this, and then truly I must go, for the promoter has begun that specific throat-cutting gesture. Cancelled traditions, friends, whatever form they take, whatever century they happen in, remind us that nothing institutional is quite as permanent as it feels while it’s actually still happening. Good night, and enjoy whatever traditions you’ve still got, while you’ve still got them.
