ROBERT HARDMAN: Coronation concert was just one hell of a exhibit… but what about Mummy’s flower beds!

At jubilee soon after jubilee, concert right after live performance, it utilized to be his joyful duty to stand in entrance of tens of millions and elevate three cheers for ‘Mummy’.

Very last evening, it was last but not least the convert of ‘Pa’ to be on the acquiring conclude as the Prince of Wales led the nation’s salute to Charles III.

3 quarters of the way via an incredible Coronation live performance – spanning Olly Murs, the Royal Ballet, a Tom Cruise skit, choirs galore and a light-weight demonstrate stretching from Belfast to Dover – the heir to the throne stepped up to the stage.

He had appear to supply a extremely different kind of homage from Saturday’s robed genuflection in Westminster Abbey.

Yet it was, in its own way, just as touching. The concept was the same: kingship equals assistance.

All evening music: Lionel Richie executing Easy at the Coronation concert… he later experienced the royals up dancing to All Night Lengthy

Trend fireworks: Katy Perry (pictured) wowed with her extravagant gold outfit

Paloma Religion performs within Windsor Castle grounds at the Coronation Live performance tonight

Invoking the memory of the late Queen, he additional: ‘I know she’s up there, fondly retaining an eye on us. She would be a happy mother.’

Major cheers from this 20,000-sturdy crowd of ballot-winners, charity staff and Commonwealth troops. Up in the royal box, the King beamed the fondest of paternal smiles. This definitely was a hell of a present, broadcast by the BBC across 100 nations around the world, nevertheless I am not confident that ‘Mummy’ would have fully permitted of the condition of her lawns and flowerbeds.

The East Terrace, the rose garden that was so lovingly made by Prince Philip (he even created the lotus flower fountain in the middle), seemed as if an alien invasion experienced just landed in a crown-shaped spaceship.

Gangways and catwalks experienced been erected alongside rosebeds and crenellations (just as nicely that the solid incorporated Alan Titchmarsh). I hope that the royal gardeners experienced relocated the resident flock of budgerigars who generally roost at this conclude of the castle, subsequent to the golfing training course.

For several a long time, an arena has been erected down underneath in the park at this time of yr for the Royal Windsor Horse Show.

This time, a stadium double the dimensions had been bolted on to ramparts courting again to William the Conqueror. It was a stunning backdrop for a royal concert fairly in contrast to anything at all we have seen in advance of. New reign, new celebrations then.

The age of the blazing beacon is now in excess of, as in fact is the dear outdated royal fireworks display.

Final night time manufactured a countrywide light-weight clearly show, in its place.

Interlinked drones took to the skies across the kingdom – pink dragons in excess of Cardiff, a big watering can about Cornwall’s Eden Challenge and so on.

In this article at Windsor we had a huge flower, a red white and blue butterfly and a blue whale.

Seated between Queen Camilla and the Commonwealth secretary-general Baroness Scotland, the King did not look on phase himself. His own terms featured prominently during, nonetheless.

The exhibit started with an extract from his accession pledge. Later on, his reflections about the potential of the earth morphed into a new model of the Eighties strike by Basic Minds, You should not You Ignore About Me, sung by Zak Abel.

‘You can be my wingman anytime’: Tom Cruise’s airborne skit for the Coronation live performance

Olly Murs doing at the Coronation Live performance in his white outfit

Those incredibly terms then went flying across the castle partitions, about the huge circular display screen previously mentioned the phase and skywards.

Pilots will have been ready to examine it on their way in and out of neighbouring Heathrow. A baffling evening for air website traffic command. Audio will prolonged keep on being just one of the stand-out reminiscences of the crowning of Charles III.

Saturday’s Westminster Abbey ceremony was exemplary. To the canon of coronation works by Handel, Parry and Walton, we can now insert a number of extra, together with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Make A Joyful Sounds and the exquisite Sacred Hearth, sung by Pretty Yende, composed by Sarah Course and created by Dr Grahame Davies (poet, bard and deputy private secretary to the Prince of Wales).

And so it was with previous night’s musical line-up. The massive concept was not huge names so considerably as big collaborations. Some reports experienced supplied the effect that this concert experienced unsuccessful to bring in certain stars (who had, in any case, pre-booked 2023 tours just before the Queen’s demise).

They missed the point that the King had not asked for a Top 40 chart display. Although there was a good deal of that in the form of Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, Paloma Religion and Olly Murs, amid other folks, below, as well, was the classical celebrity, Lang Lang.

What the King had wanted was a collegiate celebration of British and global inventive talent, including his beloved Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Opera.

This was a bill which provided artist Tracey Emin, speaking about the King’s watercolours, just before some ended up beamed throughout the castle walls, accompanied by an enchanting recital of Bach’s Prelude in C significant by piano prodigy Lucy Illingworth. Actor Richard E Grant appeared to discuss Queen Camilla’s e-book club. The organisers had bundled the King’s grasp of ceremonies, the Earl Marshal (the Duke of Norfolk) and his Master of the Royal Family.

I dare say this is what the Royal Wide variety display might look like if it had been left to the royals.

So, we experienced Acquire That teaming up with the choir of St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Birmingham-born Steve Winwood co-ordinated a digital choir from 40 Commonwealth international locations in a rendition of his monster strike, Better Love.

From the environment of opera, Sir Bryn Terfel – fresh new from the Abbey – and Andrea Bocelli duetted by means of the Merseyside anthem, You will In no way Stroll Alone (just take be aware, Liverpool admirers who thought it was intelligent to boo the national anthem at the weekend).

Mei Mac and Ncuti Gatwa on phase all through the Coronation Live performance carrying out an extract from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen of Acquire That carry out Under no circumstances Forget about as they near the Coronation live performance

Gareth Malone marshalled the 300-potent Coronation Choir. By means of it all, the Royal Family’s in-residence talent – the Family Division Orchestra, the Point out Trumpeters and the Countess of Wessex’s String Orchestra – performed with the whole lot of them.

Paddington Bear had been the unlikely star of previous year’s Jubilee live performance. Last night’s compere was his cinematic co-star, Hugh Bonneville, who reviewed royalty with Kermit the Frog and Skip Piggy.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet popped up to explore the King’s lifelong really like of Scotland’s dwindling red squirrel populace. The monarch has, in truth, mounted a squirrel flap at his Birkhall dwelling so that Tufty and Co have obtain to a 24-hour nut provide.

By way of a little something entirely distinctive, Tom Cruise reprised his Prime Gun purpose, pre-recording a spoof from the cockpit: ‘Pilot to pilot, Your Majesty, you can be my wingman any time’ – prior to saluting and banking off.

The necessary James Bond component was delivered by Pierce Brosnan, reminding the audience of the King’s youthful ‘action male skills’. Cue some grainy pictures of the young Charles in a variety of uniforms.

The environment grew far more remarkable and the crowd livelier the later on it went on. By the time Lionel Richie took to the piano to sing ‘Easy’, we were being properly into Sunday night. ‘All Night time Long’ was not likely fairly that far but it experienced the total royal box on their ft and swaying together, waving their flags.

However very well past bedtime, Prince George and Princess Charlotte had been permitted to stay up to the conclude. One particular working day, no doubt, it will be George who seems on a phase like this to honour his personal father. Past night, he could see how it is carried out.

For all the skills and intelligent gizmos on display screen, this was – finally – a celebration of one particular person and one loved ones in the back backyard. ‘God help save the King!’ concluded the Prince of Wales, and back it arrived in a refrain of 20,000.

The grass may possibly be suffering this early morning. But the Prince of Wales was, surely, correct. ‘Mummy’ would have been happy without a doubt.