Royal Wedding: Drunk and Bigamous

Before he became King George IV, George the Prince of Wales (1762 –1830) fell in love with the twice widowed, Maria Fitzherbert and they secretly married. The prince continued, however, to enjoy a luxurious and exorbitant lifestyle and he soon plunged into great debt.

George, Prince of Wales (1738-1820) 

Luckily, the truth of the prince's marriage was not known by the public, as it would have caused an immense scandal. But parliament did grant the prince £161,000 (equivalent to £18,450,000 today) to pay his debts.

Maria Anne Fitzherbert by Thomas Gainsborough, 1784

The prince continued to spend and his debts continued to escalate. Things became dire, but the prince's father, the king, would only assist his son, the prince, if he would marry his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick.

And so, the wedding was duly arranged and Princess Caroline arrived so richly dressed that she could hardly walk. The prince, however, arrived for his wedding day extremely drunk. The Prince of Wales then proceeded to become even more drunk, which meant that he spent his wedding night passed-out, in front of the fireplace, on the bedroom floor. In the early morning, the Prince managed to perform his conjugal duties, with the result that a daughter was born nine months later.

As to the Prince's marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, it was declared technically illegal, because he was the heir to the throne and she was Catholic.

Burning Money For Fun

On 23 August 1994, in a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty burnt £1,000,000 in cash.

The pair, who had formed an art foundation called the K Foundation, after they had retired from the music industry, decided that they wanted to do something extremely artistically subversive, so, they burned a million pounds in cash.

The money incinerating event was filmed on Super 8 by their friend Gimpo and a freelance journalist at the event wrote an article about it in The Observer.

The journalist, Jim Reid, said that at first, he felt shock and guilt about burning the money, but then, he simply became bored with the whole thing, as the money took well over an hour to burn, as Drummond and Cauty added £50 notes to the fire.

Later Drummond admitted that only about £900,000 of the money was actually burnt, as lots of the cash flew straight up the chimney. An honest islander, it was reported by the press, handed in £1,500 to the police.

The backlash, incredulity and anger that this burning of £1,000,000 provoked, showed very clearly how the destruction of money is perceived as a transgressive act by most people. According to the psychologist, Claudia Hammond, research shows that our brains respond to money as if it is a tool. This is why the burning of a load of printed paper gets people so riled up. Because we see the usefulness and potential of money and the loss of the money is a loss of potential.