For the last couple of weeks a true Carnaval song has been hogging the number one spot of the Dutch pop charts.
André Van Duin has been one of the premier Dutch humorists for over thirty years and counting. He has a very flexible face and an equally flexible voice. In the low countries he's famous for his timeless humor and his ability to make an audience burst out in laughter by just raising one of his eyebrows.
André Van Duin doing an imitation of Elvis.
Over the course of his career Van Duin has managed to score number one singles with very silly (to the point of getting stupid but not yet, still good) songs and Holland's traditional "Carnaval" holiday has given him plenty of opportunity to sell those song and sell them well. Which also is the case this year.
This is Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, the mother of our Current Queen Beatrix.
Juliana wasn't really what you could call a typical monarch. Her father Prince Hendrik, taught her how to ride roller skates through the long halls of the royal palace and later when Beatrix was born she insisted on changing the diapers of her baby girl herself. And later when she stepped down and Beatrix became Queen, Juliana happily rode to the local drug store on her bicycle to get groceries, insisting that people address her as "Madam" and not as "Majesty"
She was the Queen among Queens for us Dutch people. She died in 2004 and is still missed by the Dutch people who saw her as the grandmother or a wise aunt they never had.
So given that Juliana had such a character trait of "I might be a Queen but I'm your normal every day woman too." gave André Van Duin the inspiration to write a song about the Queen on her birthday party going "I have had enough of that silly elaborate food served on royal parties, I'm going to serve them meatballs this year."
With us Dutchmen having enclosed the memory of Queen Juliana and her quirks so deeply inside our hearts, it wasn't really a surprise that Van Duin had struck gold once again. From what I understand Queen Beatrix has received a copy of the song and was quoted saying that it was "Charming"
