Where did you get that hat

Where did you get that tile

Isn't it a nobby one

And just the proper style

I should like to have one

Just the same as that

Wherever I go they'd shout "Hello"

Where did you get that hat 

There’ll always be an England. Yesterday was Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot. This is where you see the silly hats. According to The Telegraph:

The hats on display were some of the most extravagant and eye-catching ever seen at the famous meeting.

Futuristic satellite dish-styles and a model of The O2 Millennium Dome competed with the "floating UFO" roof on the modernist, new grandstand…

Massive ostrich feathers dyed in rainbow colours were perched atop pill boxes and turbans. Pheasant feathers sprouted from cloches, boaters and oversized meringues of silk tulle.

Spirograph cock-feathers whirled like little windmills and fluffy marabou trembled on the brims of large picture hats.

In case any Americans did not feel at home in this quintessentially English environment:

Customized cowboy hats, often home-decorated with feathers, beads and flowers, were the millinery outsiders, injecting a "yee-hah" note of Wild West rodeo chic to the traditional Ladies' Day parade.

I must wear one of those when I go to America, so I can pass unnoticed among the natives. The hat, together with my impeccable impersonation of Blanche DuBois, will ensure that nobody suspects my Limey origins.

Cecil Beaton-esque black and white - inspired by the famous Royal Ascot scene from My Fair Lady - was a joint favourite with neon-bright fuschia, violet, scarlet and lime.

I cannot be the only one who, on hearing the name “Ascot”, starts humming the My Fair Lady song. All together now:

Ev'ry duke and earl and peer is here

Ev'ryone who should be here is here.

What a smashing, positively dashing

Spectacle: the Ascot op'ning day

At the gate are all the horses

Waiting for the cue to fly away.

What a gripping, absolutely ripping

Moment at the Ascot op'ning day

This scene is memorable for its “naughty” last line, when Audrey Hepburn – sorry Eliza Doolittle, fearing that her horse, Dover, is losing, drops her newly acquired gentility and yells: “Come on, Dover, move your bloomin’ arse!”

Everyone gasps in shock; Higgins covers his mouth, suppressing a laugh; a lady faints; and Pickering quietly lowers his hat. Yes, Audrey Hepburn’s Cockney accent really is appalling.

In the original Pygmalion, as is well known, the same degree of shock was generated by Eliza’s words: “Not bloody likely!” How innocent this now sounds. Even “bloomin’ arse” sounds quaint. What would be needed today to shock the audience to the degree that they were shocked by “bloody” in 1913?

Since sexual swear words are in widespread use, and religious swear words have long since lost their power, to shock today you would need to break a taboo of political correctness, for example by saying “Mohammedan”. Working that into the story line would take a little bit of bloomin’ luck.

*Titfer = hat (Cockney rhyming slang "tit for tat", obviously)