In a shocking display of trans-European camaraderie that threatens to undermine Brexit’s entire raison d'être, Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been fitted with a brand new pair of lungs. The operation, performed by a crack team of UK medics who clearly have nothing better to do, was deemed a ‘resounding success’ by the sort of people who use phrases like ‘resounding success’ without a hint of irony.
Let us pause to savour the delicious irony: a nation built on oil money, with a sovereign wealth fund large enough to buy the entire British Isles and turn them into a giant ski slope, had to rely on the beleaguered, underfunded, and perpetually overworked medical professionals of the NHS to give their princess a working respiratory system. One can almost hear the champagne corks popping in Oslo, followed by a collective murmur of ‘thank God for the British taxpayer’.
The crown princess, who has been battling a form of chronic lung disease that presumably wasn’t cured by a diet of pickled herring and aquavit, received the transplant at Oslo University Hospital. The UK team, flown in as part of a ‘long-standing partnership’ between the two countries, were reportedly handsomely compensated in reindeer meat and IKEA vouchers. Details of the procedure remain sketchy, but we imagine it involved a lot of sawing, stitching, and solemn declarations that ‘the new lungs are settling in nicely’.
Of course, this raises the obvious question: why can’t the NHS perform such miracles for British patients without charging them the GDP of a small nation? Perhaps because the British government is too busy counting paperclips and privatising the remaining bits of the health service to notice that actual medicine is being practised. But let us not dwell on such trifles. The crown princess is breathing easy, the UK medics have another line on their CVs, and the Norwegian monarchy can continue its proud tradition of doing very little except looking regal and occasionally falling off horses.
One can only hope that this act of medical altruism will be repaid with plentiful supplies of salmon, a discount on future oil imports, and perhaps a lifetime’s supply of those delightful brown cheese slices that taste like sweetened rubber. And should the Norwegian royal family ever require a liver, kidney, or complete circulatory system overhaul, they know exactly where to look: the NHS, the world’s leading organ bank for the European aristocracy.
