LONDON, Jan 28: Just as Hollywood has consistently trounced the British film industry at the international box office stakes, this week the all American saga, ``Free Willy: Presidential romps inside and outside the Oval Office'', has squeaked ahead of Britain home-grown celebrity tale: ``The Queen Mum's Hip Replacement-II''. This is the exciting new sequel to ``The Queen Mum's Hip Replacement'', from the same director as ``The Fish Bone in the Queen Mum's Throat''. But the patriotic end of the British market including the BBC and the large circulation tabloid press it is still the Queen Mum who has won out.The plot is simple. The protagonist, a 97-year-old mother of two and former Queen, withered by age but mindful of her public duties (collecting flowers from `well-wishers' and waving with a finely controlled movement of the wrist) spends an afternoon doing what her family clearly enjoys most -- communing with thoroughbred horses. She stumbles and falls on a hard concrete surface and breaks a bone.
A999 call summons an ambulance, and in the dead of night she is carried past country lanes, horse paddocks and grazing sheep to a state of the art operation theatre in central London. As the world sleeps a surgeon decides what you can't fix, you can replace, and replaces her hip with the same dexterity that he replaced her other hip just two years ago. Hence ``Hip Replacement II''. The world awakens in awe to this amazing story of courage under fire, stoicism in adversity and what a very healthy 97 year old can deal with.
The big surprise that so moves news editors and royal correspondents is that ``The Queen Mother is very tired after her hip replacement operation.''
Orthopaedic surgeons in all shapes and sizes are in high demand by the press to explain to a gawping public what it is like to have a hip replaced at 97.
Graphic artists recreate the co-ordinates of a human hip and how it can now be replaced. Anyone who had missed it the first time round has a second chance at learning how science hasimproved the lives of the common and not so common people. Outside the hospital, flowers begin to arrive.
The Queen of Great Britain and defender of the faith, the old lady's older daughter is seen driving off to see some horses, Princess Margaret, her younger sister, is seen riding a horse. Her grandson, the Prince of Wales, who has also been in the news for conversing with flowers and adultery, is recovering from a broken rib after having fallen off a horse. But no member of the old lady's family is sighted anywhere in the vicinity of the hospital.
European TV journalists can be heard telling their audiences that this is not a sign of callousness but of a peculiarly British form of stoicism.
British journalists remind their viewers that this is really no different from ``Hip Replacement I'', when the first member of the family, came to see her several days after her operation, and that she is indeed the most popular member of he royal family, and that people will never forget her for her heroicvisits to the east end after it was bombarded in the Second World War.
More news floods in: ``The Queen Mum has had a second comfortable day after her hip replacement operation.'' It is rumoured that some members of her family will visit her on Tuesday, just two days after her operation. Doctors say that she will take a few small steps (and some giant steps for the newspapers) in a day or two. Smiles of relief all round. A band strikes up, ``God save courageous Queen Mum''.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
