{"id":2467654,"date":"2026-06-19T21:53:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2467654"},"modified":"2026-06-19T21:53:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:53:52","slug":"i-hate-royal-ascot-its-not-elitist-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/i-hate-royal-ascot-its-not-elitist-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"I hate Royal Ascot. It\u2019s not elitist enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-test=\"article-body-text\">\n<p>Except what seems to work on paper is, in reality, a full-blown horror story, at the centre of which is the nightmare of heat and cost. Heat because of the compulsory male dress. There are three layers of morning dress: the throttling buttoned-up shirt, the corset-suffocation of a waistcoat, the heavy, sweaty madness of a coat and the awkward, boiling burden of a top hat.<\/p>\n<p>The costs make me queasy just to contemplate. From London, that\u2019s a taxi to Waterloo, a return train, food and drink and the gambling. A pal once put to me the idea that \u201cwe\u2019ll get the tickets, you buy lunch\u201d. Seems a fair deal \u2013 until you realise that a bottle of average chardonnay in a tent in the Royal Enclosure costs more than \u00a3100, and it\u2019s at least the same per head for lunch. A refreshing glass of Pimm\u2019s (make that a weak and watery ice-filled aberration) is north of \u00a325. Add a mid-afternoon break for tea with a glass of champagne, and you could have taken a family of four to Corfu for a week, all-inclusive, with water-skiing lessons, too, and a night en route at a Sofitel.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s actually being there. Because far from a merry-go-round of socialising, it\u2019s a day of ducking idiots and social climbers. Yes, it\u2019s a marvel to watch the <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/royal-family\/2026\/06\/17\/princess-of-wales-returns-to-ascot-after-cancer-treatment\/\">arrival of the Royal family as they process, drawn by horse and carriage<\/a>, onto the racecourse. But the comments of one\u2019s neighbours, gawping at this poor flock of sovereignty: \u201cLook at him\/her\/it! Too thin\/too fat\/too prim\/too unshaven. I bet Prince Andrew\/is\/isn\u2019t watching\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Except what seems to work on paper is, in reality, a full-blown horror story, at the centre of which is the nightmare of heat and cost. Heat because of the compulsory male dress. There are three layers of morning dress: the throttling buttoned-up shirt, the corset-suffocation of a waistcoat, the heavy, sweaty madness of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2467655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[394344,387180,183049,21738,311424,387181,49174,425618,382398,483230,485488],"class_list":["post-2467654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-comment","tag-daily-features","tag-king-charles-iii","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-other-features","tag-queen-camilla","tag-royal-ascot","tag-us-content","tag-william-sitwell","tag-world-darts-championship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/I-hate-Royal-Ascot-Its-not-elitist-enough.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2467656,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467654\/revisions\/2467656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2467655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}