Sandy Burgham: We're Americanised, but idolising royalty is going too far

God save our Queen. So she finally clicked on to Cool Britannia right when it was decidedly luke-warmish. How excruciating it must have been for her to have to host a series of parties in her own backyard for thousands of drunk and urinating strangers when no doubt she would much rather have been tucked up in bed with a mug of Horlicks, watching telly.

But it actually worked. Well, for the Poms that is. For us New Zealanders the Queen's jubilee week was all a bit of a non-event, even if we did take the liberty of a day off in honour of her birthday. While revellers up and down the Mall were proud to be British and swept up into the celebration of our monarch, the outer ripples of the jubilee jubilations had smoothed over by the time they hit this side of the world. We were still getting over the excitement of Clinton's second visit to buy glass knick-knacks in Parnell.

I have heard many who are using the lack of Kiwi fanfare in last week's jubilee celebration as another painful display of how out of sync our national character is with that of our former mother nation: while once upon a time we were known as a once-upon-a-time version of Britain we have now moved on. Before you sit back smugly, thinking that we now have our own unique culture that has emerged, this is under question. It seems we have simply switched from taking our cues from Mother England to following in the wake of the Americans and I am not at all sure this is a good thing.

We are beginning to feel like a satellite American state. We dress down not up, no longer go in for tea but go out for coffee and have exercise programmes that are more important than our politics. (It's a pity we have not followed the cool, chic, unflappable New Yorkers in style but those slightly hysterical, alternative Californian types, those tired old hippies embracing the new age with gusto. Whether it's acupuncture, crystals, reiki massage, reflexology, Alexander technique, clairvoyance, meditation, pot for medicinal purposes, yoga or anything else with the word healing in its blurb, you name it, we pay for it.)

Maybe it's all due to our LOTR dependency problem but the excitement over the announcement Tom Cruise was coming to the Taranaki was almost bizarre and I am sure there are many out there who have already started counting down the sleeps. This was announced the same week Clinton had grown women swooning all over Parnell as he worked the village as smooth as a snake oil vendor. Pardon his cheesy overfamiliarity, forget his past indiscretions, excuse the fact that he's less silver fox and more wily coyote; he is still king of the world, our world.

As we shift our focus from England to America it is only natural we will debate the relevance of a monarchy. And here's the irony. We seem to be forgetting that the Americans have what I call royal envy. Remember their excitement when Princess Di danced with one of their princes, John Travolta? Notice how that quintessential American institute Weight Watchers has adopted Fergie as its patron saint when it had literally thousands of famous and chubby Americans to choose from. While we practically ignored the jubilee last week, they went to the trouble of saluting the Queen by lighting the Empire State building in the royal colours. Yes, the Americans have always secretly wanted their very own posh set of royals - so much so they even had to invent their own with the creation of the Kennedys' Camelot.

If we end up cutting our ties to the Crown due to cultural irrelevance, like the Americans we would simply look for replacements we could idolise anyway. So isn't it better the devil we know?

I have nothing against the royal family - it's just that all the pomp and ceremony that goes with them feels unnatural in this country of the dancing Greens. We are not natural court jesters and often in matters of celebrating royalty it seems we are uncomfortably trapped in one long, dire Royal Variety Performance. We need more excuse for family and community celebration in this country and the Queen's birthday seems like a fine excuse for a party.

So let's take yet another leaf out of the Americans' book - accept the royals as unattainable and entertaining icons and embrace their ritual and celebrations in our own informal way, but have the good nature to acknowledge them yet not take it all too seriously.