Countdown to the royal divorce - part 20

Those of you perambulating around the web this morning may have been as startled, as was I, by one of the headlines in the Torygraph – ‘Prince Philip told Downing Street to "---- off" over Diana funeral’. In the text of the article, the word ‘----‘ is replaced by the word ‘fuck’. This reinforces the view that newspaper editors are not worried by the fact that some 3% of readers actually progress beyond the headlines. The article ends with the statement “No one from Buckingham Palace was available for comment (last night).” This is not true. A gentleman from the Torygraph telephoned, asked to speak to Phil, and was put through. He was then told to fuck off. At least, that is what he thinks happened. Allow me to elaborate.

Camilla gets bored very easily. I am sure you can understand this. This is particularly evident when she is required to be present at formal occasions. About 10 years ago she learned to hack into the telecommunications system in use in the royal households, and began to practice imitating the telephone voices of other members of the family. It was she who took the call from the Telegraph yesterday, and she is to be congratulated for here impersonation of Phil. I hope that this information, which, as with all things here are, is intended to inform rather than titillate, will, once and for all, dispel the myth that she is not some jumped-up, upper class, brain dead, vacuous tart with all the charm of the decomposing corpse of a hippo.

It would be indiscrete of me to mention all of the other telephonic adventures of our future consort of the head of state. Sometimes her calls have been taken seriously and it would be impolitic to disclose them now as it would be very difficult to unravel the consequences.

I can tell you, however, that she was the one who:

• Purporting to be Harry, proposed to Ann Robinson.
• Imitating Anne, asked if HMS “Dominatrix” could return to port, as Tim had forgotten his sandwiches.
• Took part in a late night chat programme on BBC Reading, where, as Prince Andrew, she voiced the opinion that the feudal system had done a lot of good for the country.
• Again as Anne, applied for back stage tickets for a Metallica concert in Stockholm.

I will draw a discrete veil over her interactions with the head of the BBC, other than to say that there is no way, ever, in which the queen would have considered delivering the 2004 christmas day message to the commonwealth in a swimsuit.