In a touching departure from centuries of tradition, His Majesty King Charles III has this year chosen to deliver his annual Christmas message not from Buckingham Palace, but accidentally via the tannoy of a Waitrose car park in Rochdale.
The speech, picked up by a passing pensioner’s hearing aid and inexplicably amplified through the car park’s “return your trolley” announcement system, began as all great royal addresses do, with confusion and the distant sound of someone sitting on a microphone.
“Ah. Is this thing, Camilla, is this on? Can they hear me? I’m hearing myself. Good lord, I sound like a haunted decanter.”
Once fully upright and oriented towards the vague direction of the Commonwealth, His Majesty launched into what some have called a “raw and unfiltered” assessment of 2025, a year he described as “the spiritual sequel to a mid-range stomach virus.”
“This year, Britain has faced many challenges,” the King intoned, audibly unwrapping a Werther’s Original. “Inflation has risen, lettuce remains unreasonably smug, and Prince Andrew still refuses to move out of the palace annex he’s converted into a laser tag arena.”
He went on to commend the “ordinary working Britons who continue to persevere despite it all, especially those brave enough to enter a Tesco Express after 8pm,” and expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the very poor journalists at the Rochdale Times, teachers, and “the bloke at Windsor M&S who keeps the self-checkout machines from eating pensioners.”
The speech took an emotional turn when His Majesty paused to reflect on the environment.
“This Christmas, let us remember our precious natural world. I myself planted a tree last week, although it turned out to be my cousin’s wig rack. Still, it felt symbolic.”
Observers noted the speech’s climax came with the unexpected arrival of a Sainsbury’s delivery van, during which the King could be heard shouting, “No, I said semi-skimmed!” before returning to the microphone and offering a solemn blessing:
“May your sprouts be tolerable, your relatives mildly sedated, and your heating mysteriously subsidised. God save us all.”
The Palace later clarified that the official Christmas message will be broadcast as normal at 3pm on Christmas Day, assuming no further interference from rogue supermarket PA systems or Meghan Markle’s podcast.
Reporting from down the M62, where Santa was last seen shoplifting Baileys from a Rochdale Co-op, this is your local correspondent wishing you all a moderately bearable Christmas.
