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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Singer Keron Ramsey revamps Princess Margaret highway meme

by

Gillian Caliste
1118 days ago
20220130
Keron Ramsey

Keron Ramsey

Leave it to a Tri­ni to find some­thing to laugh about even in tough times. Even more ex­tra­or­di­nary, is a Trinida­di­an's abil­i­ty to repack­age and re­vise a long-stand­ing joke. Pi­cong and hu­mour have tak­en on new life, be­com­ing a sta­ple of so­cial me­dia now that peo­ple have more time on their hands. And as many would at­test, from pub­lic fig­ure to the man...or woman in the street, no one es­capes the sharp wit of co­me­di­ans, so­cial me­dia con­tent cre­ators or com­menters.

Most like­ly lead­ing the pack as a time­less piece of “comedic gold” is the Princess Mar­garet la­dy high­way meme. Still, as icon­ic as the meme has be­come since the el­der­ly la­dy gave her hon­est re­sponse about nine years ago to ques­tions about plans to con­struct a con­tro­ver­sial high­way that would run through her vil­lage in Debe, per­haps it could be ex­pressed in a way that en­sured once and for all that re­gard­less of class or creed, no one missed out on the joke.

En­ter Keron Ram­sey–pro­nounced Kee-ron–as he was quick to in­form with a laugh when asked to con­firm his name dur­ing a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view re­cent­ly.

“Lis­ten eh, my fa­ther had good in­ten­tions,” he con­tin­ued.

With such an in­tro­duc­tion, it was clear that this re­porter was in for some en­ter­tain­ment.

Ram­sey re­cent­ly de­liv­ered a dra­mat­ic read­ing of a po­em writ­ten by at­tor­ney and po­et, Léel Ar­lene Bain, based on the Princess Mar­garet la­dy high­way meme on his Face­book page to the de­light of his 1,200 plus Face­book fans and 4,000 fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram. He said he did not ex­pect his Princess Mar­garet en­act­ment to gain the large re­sponse that it did.

He added: “… but I un­der­stand the pow­er of bridg­ing that lan­guage gap. Some­times, some peo­ple may not un­der­stand Tri­ni par­lance or Tri­ni pa­tois, so to hear it in an­oth­er way and for it to still be fun­ny is some­thing that a lot of peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ate.”

The lady in the Princess Margaret meme.Princess Margaret Meme

The lady in the Princess Margaret meme.Princess Margaret Meme

FACEBOOK PHOTO

In the orig­i­nal ver­sion, the la­dy ex­plains in a tele­vi­sion news in­ter­view that she is against a high­way be­ing built on land where she and gen­er­a­tions of her fam­i­ly had been liv­ing for years.

“We don't want no high­way be­cause we born and grow here. Ah have chirren and granchirren as sim­ple as you see me here...”

In his it­er­a­tion, an im­pas­sioned Ram­sey trans­lates: “If you search the en­tire town of Siparia you would find that no one en­treat­ed this. We do not ap­prove of the high­way be­cause from birth, we have lived here. We've built our lives here...our gen­er­a­tions call here home. You may not know this from just look­ing at me...”

Where the la­dy re­bukes a for­mer head of gov­ern­ment, claim­ing she is act­ing like she is Princess Mar­garet, ref­er­enc­ing the name of the orig­i­nal high­way, Ram­sey ques­tions: “...so you dis­es­teem the same peo­ple who el­e­vat­ed you?”

He in­ter­prets the ad­vice fi­nal­ly giv­en by the la­dy of where the high­way could be bet­ter used as:

“Per­haps she should have said (not a ty­po) high­way con­struct­ed at the meet­ing of her thighs. I say this with­out trep­i­da­tion and I de­clare it with my chest, by way of re­it­er­a­tion. She may have the high­way con­struct­ed at the meet­ing of her thighs!”

Ram­sey said Bain wrote the piece to­wards the end of 2021 and since they are friends on Face­book, it was easy to col­lab­o­rate.

The com­men­da­tions poured in from com­menters:

“This is mas­tery.”

“Wow! What a pro­duc­tion!”

“This is soooo good, we need more.”

“Bridg­ing the gap” is an on­go­ing theme in Ram­sey's so­cial me­dia cre­ations. In “Say It Like a Tri­ni”, he in­ter­prets for­mal lan­guage, break­ing it down in­to the ver­nac­u­lar or some­times in­to trend­ing slang. He al­so draws from Tri­ni life for his char­ac­ter sketch­es in­clud­ing, “Tri­ni Un­cle” who is al­ways “ma­m­aguy­ing” oth­ers, and “Love Gu­ru” who of­fers some in­ter­est­ing, if not ques­tion­able, ad­vice on re­la­tion­ships in re­sponse to trou­bles post­ed by fans who en­joy his cre­ativ­i­ty and abil­i­ty to re­late to them.

 Keron Ramsey as he dramatically interprets the Princess Margaret lady highway meme.

Keron Ramsey as he dramatically interprets the Princess Margaret lady highway meme.

But Ram­sey, who goes by his mid­dle name, Khrstvn, and who start­ed do­ing hu­mor­ous videos in June 2021, is no class clown.

“First and fore­most, I'm a singer-song­writer, but I'm a comedic com­men­ta­tor if we talk about the oth­er so­cial me­dia stuff. I've been in­to the per­form­ing arts all my life.

“The aim was just to help bring some smiles, al­le­vi­ate stress in this dif­fi­cult time. It was an av­enue to ex­press my­self and be able to con­nect with the peo­ple who sup­port me,” he said.

As a mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­er, his main source of in­come has been af­fect­ed heav­i­ly, he said, ex­cus­ing him­self to check on his boys who were in on­line class­es at the time. His wife of 11 years, La Toya, was out at work.

“Yes, I'm the fa­ther of three boys, hus­band of one wife,” he joked.

“...one at a time, yes one at a time,” he laughed when warned to make sure it was so.

The 33-year-old has per­formed since age 16, trav­el­ling to South Amer­i­ca, the UK and oth­er parts of Eu­rope as a gospel singer. He start­ed do­ing main­stream mu­sic with Im­ij and Com­pa­ny in 2018 and per­formed at nu­mer­ous gigs un­til the lock­down in 2020.

Ram­sey said he grew up in a house­hold of three, ob­serv­ing his moth­er sing with a lo­cal group through­out Trinidad. His younger broth­er, Kess Ram­sey, is al­so pop­u­lar as a Chris­t­ian co­me­di­an who has sold out at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA).

Hav­ing to shift to com­e­dy has not stunt­ed the artiste, how­ev­er. He has picked up some con­nec­tions with busi­ness own­ers and has done a few ads for their so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in­clud­ing one for a large telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice provider.

“There has been a win­dow where I've been able to ex­press my­self in an­oth­er way be­cause of the time that I now have. At the end of the day, if you want to do some­thing else, you can al­ways do it. Yes, it's go­ing to feel like you're build­ing from the ground up be­cause it's a new thing, but you can do some­thing new at any time. I think last year and the year be­fore have proven that,” Ram­sey said.

Cur­rent­ly in the mid­dle of shoot­ing an ad for a pop­u­lar drink and await­ing news about trav­el­ling abroad for a singing and act­ing gig, he said al­though singing had been his main­stay, he would con­tin­ue still with com­e­dy and what­ev­er else comes his way.

“I'm do­ing every­thing. There are a lot of dif­fer­ent as­pects that you get from me. I'm mul­ti­fac­eted and I try to max­imise on every­thing. As soon as a door opens, I'm walk­ing through,” he said.

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