Super pop concert to light up Diana show

LONDON: Once upon a time they commemorated great kings, grand queens, respected princes and admired princesses of the realm by erecting statues in public squares. Now, they plan "super" pop concerts.
Diana's sons, Princes William and Harry, are responsible for the strangest idea yet for a royal commemoration. By all accounts, the brothers are planning an event to rival Live Aid, Live8 and every other pop jamboree ever to "celebrate" the 10th anniversary of their mother's feverishly-mourned death and 46th year of her fraught and frantic life.As with all things royal, the Diana pop concert would be a five-star, gold-standard, club-class show redolent of that unmistakable perfume of privilege.
The youthful princes are planning to hold it at London's redeveloped Wembley Stadium, which can seat 90,000 people. Hundreds of millions around the world will be graciously offered a royal appointment to view it on television, beefing up a cash cow that will surely earn billions. Diana's birthday, July 1, 2007, would see her sons hosting the event. This too would be a royal first. The distance between rock DJs and royalty will have shrunk to a mere nothing.
What next in the new world sans frontiers? The Duke of York, Prince Andrew and his former wife, flame-haired 'Fergie', offering a double-headed rocking-singles royal '80s "nite"? Eco-conscious Prince Charles and Camilla of the cocker-spaniel hair presenting a Phil Collins popfest themed around his greatest hits about second-time love? These would obviously include - by royal fiat - 'I Cannot Believe It's True', 'We're Sons of Our Fathers', 'Both Sides of the Story', 'Come with me' and 'A Groovy Kind of Love'.
Potentially, the British Queen could next be suing for a share of the royalties racked up by rock band 'Queen', citing an historic, well-recognised franchise on their name. The possibilities are as vast as they are ludicrous. If it comes to pass, next year's Diana show will have completed the arc that inexorably began in 1981 with the doomed Charles-and-Di nuptials to turn British royalty into the most blue-blooded characters ever of any long-running soap opera. The concert will be yet another component of the schmaltzy storyline that saw Marvel Comics announce in 2003 - and back down - on controversial plans to publish a five-part series titled 'Di another Day'.
It was a reference both to Diana and the 20th Bond film 'Die another Day'. The iconic Princess of Wales, the comic-book publishers, suggested, would be resurrected as Diana, the mutant with superpowers. Marvel Comics was forced to drop the idea but it did not stop yet another commercial operator from producing a role-playing game called 'Diana: Warrior Princess'. The distance between seigneurial grandeur and sharp-eyed commercialism had shrunk to nothing. There was no longer much to distinguish between coronets and comics. Cartoon royalty was available freely to all to consume.
To some, this is a sign that an old-world, out-of-date, hierarchical, supremely unfair institution based on the veritable lottery of primogeniture, genetics and bloodlines is being dragged into a democratic New World Order. But once Wills and Harry turn DJ in their mother's cause, what is to distinguish these unproven performers from The Artiste Formerly Known as Prince?