There is no truth in any of this, whatsoever.

Warning: None of the following may be true, real or ever have happened. If you are incensed, angered or just slightly annoyed by it then STOP READING.

He had mentioned that he would like to go and see it. The problem, for me, was that I too wanted to see it but I didn’t want to spoil my enjoyment of it by watching it in Italian and understand little, to have to watch it again, in English.

So, someone gave me a copy ….. in English. I watched it over a few nights. Now, here, I should give you some background.

I don’t really like them. They are German, after all (with apologies to the Germans at least one of whom is a friend). I think it’s more that they are German and think they run the UK which they don’t, quite obviously. I mean, they even had to change their surname from Saxe-Coberg and Gotha so that people wouldn’t confuse them with Germans (which they were). This was the First World War.

By the second one, they were quite happy to court Hitler. ‘He seemed to have the right idea’!

When the old father died the succession passed to Edward. But Edward was having a not-so-secret affair with a married American woman. He loved her so much he gave up on ‘his duties’ and so his younger brother became George VI. His wife, so it is said, hated both Edward and ‘that woman’, Wallis. Not because they were horrible (although they might have been) but because they were the cause of her husband being put in an impossible position and, eventually, dying rather younger than he might have, ordinarily.

After George’s death, his eldest daughter was next. There was a small snag, however. His daughter would be Queen. His mother, still alive, was the Queen Mother (Mary, wife of George V). So what would the title of George VI’s wife be? You couldn’t really have two Queen Mothers, now could you? OK so officially she died of ‘gastric problems’, being an euphemism for lung cancer. Or, of course, given the scheming of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, she could have had the old Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, done away with?

I plump for the last option.

So, I go to watch the film with a preconceived idea of QE, the Queen Mother (being played by Helena Bonham-Carter) as a rather wicked old witch who ruled her husband and, when he became King, the household, with quite an iron fist. Of her husband being a bit of a wimp. Of the politicians of the time being rather stupid, etc., etc.

But, this is a film. It is made ‘nice’. Actually, I found it quite heart-warming. HBC was wonderful as the Queen as was Colin Firth as Bertie. For me, Geoffrey Rush as Logue was the best of them all. Actually, it made me almost cry at the end (because I am such a softie and just love happy endings in films).

So now I have told F that I will be very happy to go and see the Italian-dubbed version of The King’s Speech (Il Discorso del Re) at the cinema. In fact, I said we just HAVE to go. The only thing that ‘worries’ me is that I like it so much because it is also a story of Britain (and a Britain we like to think of as ‘Great’) and a man overcoming all odds and a woman who loves him – and will an Italian think of it like this also or will missing the Great out of Britain mean that it is much less of a good story?

And, F replies that we should go this weekend. I am happy.