The landlady of a boozer in Derby has banned customers from talking about the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, saying it provided a place for people to get away from it all
A PUB in Derby has banned any mention of the upcoming Royal Wedding, as it says it wants to protect its regulars.
While most of the country is set to celebrate the forthcoming nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the Alexandra Hotel customers who talk about the wedding will have to pay up into the pub’s charity tin.
Landlady Anna Dyson-Edge said: “A lot of our customers are blokes and they are not interested in it.
“They said: ‘A royal wedding? Ugh! We are sick of it.’
“We thought we would give them somewhere to come to get away from it all.”
Posters around the pub in Siddals Road, Derby, say: “Royal wedding-free zone.
Please refrain from discussing the royal wedding. We’re not interested in it. Let’s talk about beer or the weather instead - or something more interesting.”
Anna, who stressed she was not anti-royal, added: “We did the same for Kate and William when they got married. We raised about £400.”
The money raised from the royal wedding “swear box” will go towards the Nightingale Macmillan Unit at the Royal Derby Hospital - as it did for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011.
This is a charity close Anna’s heart as her grandad Keith Holmes was cared for at the unit until his death from cancer in March 2011. Anna has even had her head shaved in the past to raise money for the Macmillan unit.
The pub has been running the royal wedding-free zone since Harry and Meghan announced the date back in December. Most of the people who have had to pay up into the charity tin have been people passing through - the regulars know better.
The pub is not planning any special events on Saturday to distract its punters from the royal wedding but it has no TV screens so there should be no temptation to tune in to the day’s celebrations.
Pub regular Nigel Clark, from Belper, said the idea to make the pub a royal-wedding free zone was “bang on”.
He added: “The less you hear about it the better. I am certainly not a royalist.”
He admitted some members of his family were royal fans and would be watching the wedding but said he'd had a “lucky break” as he had already planned to be away at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire to watch motor racing on Saturday.
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