The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee pageant will be the ‘largest ever put on’

Next year’s Platinum Jubilee pageant will be the ‘largest ever put on’, organisers say – even topping events held in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s diamond milestone.

Victoria & Albert Museum chairman Nicholas Coleridge, who is co-chairing the pageant, said 6,500 performers would take part in the final day of celebrations in June.

The BBC predicts that the jubilee events – marking the Queen’s 70 years on the throne – could attract a global audience of one billion, he added.

Festivities over the extended Bank Holiday weekend from Thursday, June 2 to Sunday, June 5 will include the Trooping The Colour, a ‘great lunch’ led by the Lord Mayor of London, ‘the Queen lighting bonfires’ and a BBC concert, Mr Coleridge said. 

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Mr Coleridge focused on what the pageant – with a budget of between £10 million and £15 million – will involve.

He said: ‘It’s going to be the largest that’s ever put on, larger we think even than that that was put on for Queen Victoria in [1897].

‘That was pretty large, this is larger. It’s going to have 6,500 people taking part in it.’

Mr Coleridge said he hopes the pageant will ‘try and cheer up the country’ following the Covid pandemic.

He added: ‘At the same time, and massively importantly, we’re going to make sure whilst the Jubilee is based on London because it’s going to be a procession that goes around the parks, through Westminster, under Admiralty Arch, down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace and up past Constitution Hill, it’s not going to be London-centric.’

He went on: ‘We even have a giant map, making sure that we have people from every part of our country and indeed every part of the Commonwealth.

The BBC predicts that the jubilee events – marking the Queen’s 70 years on the throne – could attract a global audience of one billion

‘We’re going to have people from all 54 Commonwealth countries who are going to be taking part in this astounding parade.

‘We’re having all the creative industries in it – 17 different theatre groups have so far signed up to be in it, we’re having enormous sculptures the size of four-storey houses being dragged down the Mall, we’re having a mysterious celebrity singer that if I said it, the entire ‘Team Jubilee’ would be so angry with me that I’d probably never be able to go back into the office.

‘We’ve got royals, we’ve got golden coaches and at the heart of it, of course, we’ve got the Queen.

‘But on the side of it the levelling up agenda will be fully respected – the North East, the North West, Plymouth, every Member of Parliament I speak to asks me whether their own constituency will be represented.’

Mr Coleridge said he expected the event to be marvellous, adding: ‘The BBC think it might be watched by approaching a billion people.

‘I suspect they may be slightly exaggerating but it’s going to be huge because it’s going everywhere.

‘By the end of it I hope we’re going to feel re-energised, highly patriotic and very much one nation as we all celebrate the Platinum Jubilee.’     

Victoria & Albert Museum chairman Nicholas Coleridge (pictured left in 2019), who is co-chairing the pageant, said 6,500 performers would take part in the final day of celebrations in June [File photo]