Diana's revenge

Diana's revenge seems to be building up nicely and is a long way from peaking. It will certainly keep us republicans amused for the foreseeable future. The wedding this coming Saturday, 19 May, will play its part: we anti-monarchists will be cheering just as gaily as the rest.

There was a cruel phrase in use in Britain some time ago to insult unwanted visitors: 'Look what the cat brought in'. Perhaps in these days, when everyone has to be nice to each other by law, it has fallen out of use.

Harry brings it home

Nevertheless, about two years ago the dim, royal alley-cat proudly arrived home with a strange creature from another world acquired on a blind-date during his playboy wanderings. The consequences are becoming clearer every day. This will indeed be Diana's revenge, as the tribe attempts to cope with this acquisition, the foundling's own vacuity, her dysfunctional family and her complex biography.

There was a time when the minimum requirements for joining the Royal Family were the ability to eat soup without dribbling it over a sash and the possession of a blameless biography. Any deviation from this iron principle brings risk with it – keyword:'Fergie'.

This time round it really is going to cause much amusement watching the tabloids shoot the fish in the barrel. The squawking about 'press intrusion' has already started, but that moaning won't work: the members of the foundling's wacko family and her wacko friends are the ones driving the stories.

Faking it

The whole relationship is based on fakery: at its heart we have two 'environmentalists' and 'humanitarians' who conduct a two-year romance based on airmiles and conspicuous consumption; there was the heartfelt religious conversion followed by induction into the Church of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, no less, with holy water from the Dead Sea, no less, followed by, two days later, Easter – but not spent on her knees in an Anglican church praying to her new God for guidance but at home in Los Angeles, planning the wedding; we have the two 'environmentalists' and 'humanitarians' who lash out on a huge engagement rock and even more on a huge wedding followed by a huge honeymoon with huge airmiles in some humanitarian-friendly location – probably without an Anglican church in sight.

Little is as it seems. At first we might have had some sympathy for her reclusive father, slobby, shambling pyramid of lard though he may be, who it seemed wanted nothing more than to live the rest of his days in the obscurity of his Mexican retreat, the innocent who was now catapulted by his daughter into the international spotlight. But all the sympathy evaporated in seconds when he arranged a simulated paparazzi photoshoot to make some money off his new fame. And we thought Diana's brother Charles Spencer was an attention-seeking flake.

Charles the Dim

The royals must all be incredibly dim to have allowed this relationship even to get started. The sons of Diana tell us they want media privacy, but the youngest has chosen to waft the tastiest bait imaginable under their noses. The toleration of this idiocy is clearly the folly of Charles: as the father of the miscreant, he is the one who should have intervened. But, dim and muddled himself, he failed to act and now doom will fall on the House of Windsor, perhaps even before he ascends to the throne to have his own shot at wrecking it.

Every day the royals will have cause to regret their going along with this liason. It's certainly going to be a lot of fun for the rest of us, though.