THE Royal Mint is facing heavy criticism for its decision to put American rapper Will I Am on the new £10 note to be released later this year.
The Black Eyed Peas star, who has already carried the Olympic torch and played a leading role at the Diamond Jubilee concert, will be pictured in shades doing hip hop hands over his signature phrase Fuck Shit Up.
He beat several nominees from British history, including mathematician Alan Turing, bouncing bomb designer Barnes Wallis and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, inventor of the stovepipe hat.
Will I Am, real name Ben I Am, has somehow become a bastion of Englishness based on a single series of an unsuccessful spinning-chair singing contest.
It is believed that Will was introduced to the royal family by Prince Andrew, who saw the rapper on TV discussing Fergies outrageous sluttiness. Assuming I Am was an acquaintance of the former Duchess of York, Andrew invited him to Sandringham for a round of golf.
Julian Cook, editor of Burkes Peerage, said: I first encountered Will at the Garrick Club, where he was alternating spoonfuls of Gentlemans Relish with sips of port and Pimms.
I naturally assumed I knew him from Eton, and we began talking about his work at Oxford as Professor Emeritus of Hard Beatology, riding with the Berkeley Hunt, and the terribly sad decline of red squirrel numbers in the Grampian hills.
Im not sure which of us first suggested that his grill was so motherfuckin fly, it should be on money. Him, I suspect, but I thought it was a capital idea and put it to my homies at the Royal Mint.
Will I Am ill will mark the unveiling of his £10 note at the Last Night of the Proms, where he is to lead the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a medley of his hits including Boom Boom Pow and My Humps.
