Happy as a King

Just ahead of our summer Tale for Our Time - our contemporary inversion of Anthony Hope's classic The Prisoner of Zenda - let me put in a word for our complementary entertainment at the other end of the day: the audio edition of The Mark Steyn Show, which returns on Tuesday morning. I'm delighted that some folks are enjoying both. Marc Swerdloff, a First Day Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from Florida, is enjoying The Prisoner of Windsor:

Stinging satire, screech, bawdy banter, screech... Quite the antidote to the Plague horror show Tale and the daily twitter twits and progressive riots. I laughed my a//s off. All hail the new King of Comedy!!

Thank you, Marc, but it is in fact a tragedy. In tonight's episode, a penniless Ruritanian finds himself invited to a glittering Coronation Ball, but stuck down the dull end of the party:

'Do you know the President of Europe?' asked the United States Embassy's Acting Minister Counselor for Agricultural Affairs, inviting him into the conversation. He wore his personal standard as a face mask. I would have thought 'President of Europe' was quite an important person, but apparently nobody wanted to talk to him either. Another 'President of Europe' came up a moment later, and then a third. The Acting Minister Counselor asked if they had business cards, and it seemed that the first was, in fact, the President of the European Council, the second the President of the Council of Europe, and the third was the President of the Commission to the European Council. They wouldn't customarily have troubled themselves with anything so footling as a Coronation Ball, but, after the crisis brought on by my remarks on referenda, the various European presidents had been prevailed upon to wangle a group invite to reassure the world that all was well.

'Pretty bad that European Central Bank of yours going belly up,' sympathized the Acting Minister Counselor. 'Tough break.'

Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear this latest installment of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in.

You can enjoy The Prisoner of Windsor episode by episode, night by night, twenty minutes before you lower your lamp. Or, alternatively, do feel free to binge-listen: you can find all the earlier instalments here.

If you've yet to hear any of our first thirty-eight Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining The Mark Steyn Club. Or, if you need an extra-special present for someone, why not give your loved one a Gift Membership and start him or her off with more than three dozen cracking yarns? And please join us tomorrow for another episode of The Prisoner of Windsor.