I’m sure you know how excited I can get about these big cultural events; long term readers (assuming I have any) will recall how fascinated I was by the olympic ceremonies. It seems to me that such state occasions give cities, countries or regions the chance to show off and perform before the world, and so can be very revealing about prevailing cultural attitudes. I was thus rather looking forward to last night’s Coronation Concert: it had the potential to be utterly magnificent, once more giving the UK a chance to perform before the world and show everyone how cool we can be. Think Brian May thrashing out the National Anthem stood atop Buckingham Palace, or Eric Idle’s unforgettable performance of Always Look On The Bright Side of Life at the 2012 Closing Ceremony.

What we got, however, was utterly, utterly dire. I honestly think that what we saw last night was the crappest state event ever. I kept watching out of curiosity, of course, but it just seemed to get worse as the evening wore on: there were no A-listers, no epic, rock-out moments which made your jaw drop. It was just some C-list mediocrities and a couple of puppets last popular forty years ago. Lionel Richie was as unimpressive as he was out of tune, and whoever told the three talentless schmucks known as Take That they had a shred of musical ability between them, let alone were in any way capable of performing at such an event, smeg only knows!

I was just watching a bit of breakfast TV, and they were going on about how magnificent last night was. I have to wonder whether we’re on the same planet. What we were treated to last night was awful. I know they didn’t have much time to prepare for it, but compared with other such occasions which we’ve seen over the last twenty years, it could have been so much better. A truly disappointing missed opportunity.