We Were Most Amused

The comedy show for Prince Charles’s birthday was great fun, most of all for watching an Old Right audience laugh itself silly at Jon Culshaw’s mocking impersonation, and at Robin Williams’s simple mockery, of George W Bush.

It was also delightful to hear, and at least in my case to join in at home, the roaring cheers for Andrew Sachs.

But Rowan Atkinson did what Dawn French used to do on The Vicar of Dibley, and wore, over a surplice and stole, a pectoral cross. No real-life Anglican cleric would ever have cause to this, at least unless he were a bishop with a cope over the top of it (and probably, in that case, with a mitre on top in general). So why do comedians vest themselves thus? Is it just that that is where they keep the microphone?